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DON JUAN 

OR, 


. The Elixir of Long Life, 


AND OTHER STORIES. 


By HONORÉ DE BALZAC. 


NEW YORK: 

THE F. M. LUPTON PUBLISHING COMPANY, 
Nos. 72-76 Walker Street, 


- > — '■ £■ ‘•'T*' , , ~ — 


I’ll. 

\ 


4 8 6 5 5 5 

JUL 2 3 1942 


} 


BALZAC. 


DON JUAN ; OR, THE ELIXIR OF LONG LIFE. 

On a winter’s night, in a sumptuous palace at Ferrara, Don Juan 
Belvidero was entertaining a Prince of the house of Este. At 
this period a banquet was a wonderful scene, possible only for 
the riches of royalty and the power of Princes. 

Round a table lit with perfumed tapers sat seven joyous 
women bandying sweet talk. About them the noblest marbles 
of the greatest masters gleamed white against walls of crimson 
stucco, and formed a contrast with the gorgeous colours of 
carpets brought from Turkey. 

These women, clad in satin, glittering with gold, loaded with 
jewels only less brilliant than their eyes, told each her tale of 
overpowering passion, diverse as their own charms. But 
among them was no difference either of thought or expression ; 
a movement, a look, a gesture supplied their words with com- 
mentaries wanton, lewd, melancholy, or scoffing. 

One seemed to say : “ My beauty can rekindle the ice-bound 
heart of age.” 

Another : “ I love to lie couched among my cushions and 
think, drunk with the passion of those who adore me.” 

A third, a novice at such feasts, would fain have blushed: 

840 


2 


BALZAC ; 


“ In the depth of my heart,” she said, “ I feel remorse ! I am 
a Catholic, and I fear hell. But I love you so much, so-so 
much that for you I can sacrifice eternity.” 

The fourth cried, as she drained a cup of Chian wine : “Joy, 
j ~>y for ever! Each morning dawns for me a new existence; 
each evening I drink deeo of life, the life of happiness, the life 4 
of desire ! ” 

The woman who sat by Belvidero looked at him with eyes of 
flame. She was silent. “ I should not need a bravo to kill my 
lover if he deserted me !” She laughed ; but her hand crushed 
convulsively a comfit box of wonderful workmanship. 

“When shall you be Grand Duke?” asked a sixth of the 
Prince, an expression of murderous pleasure in her teeth, of 
bacchic delirium in her eyes. 

“And you, when will your father be dead ?” said the seventh, 
throwing her bouquet at Don Juan with a gesture of maddening 
playfulness. She was a girl, young and innocent, wont to la’ugh 
at all things sacred. 

“ Ah ! do not speak of it,” cried the young and handsome 
Juan Belvidero. “ There is only one eternal father in the world, 
and as ill-luck will have it, he is mine.” 

The seven courtesans of Ferrara, the friends of Don Juan, and 
even the Prince himself cried out with horror. Two hundred 
years later, under Louis XV., the most cultivated society would 
have laughed at this sally, but perhaps also, at the beginning of 
an orgy the soul still sees with clearer eyes. In spite of the 
flame of candles, the fume of wines, the sight of gold and silver 
vessels ; in spite of the cry of passion and the presence of 
women most ravishing to look upon, perchance there slilf. 
brooded in the depths of their hearts a little of that reverencd 
for human and divine things which still struggles on, until it is 
drowned by debauchery in the last sparkling waves of wine. 


DON JUAN, 


3 


Nevertheless, their flowers were already faded, their eyes already 
clouded, and drunkenness possessed them, after the saying of 
Rabelais, “ Down to the heels of their boots.” During a 
moment of silence a door opened, and, as at the feast of 
Belshazzar, God revealed Himself. He appeared under the 
form of an old servant, with white hair and wrinkled brow, and 
tottering footsteps. He entered with an air of sadness, and 
withered with one look the garlands, and the bowls of golden 
plate, and the pyramids of fruit, and all the brightness of the 
banquet, and the flush on the scared faces of the banqueters, 
and the colours of the cushions pressed by the white arms of 
the women ; lastly, he cast a pall upon their revelry when with 
hollow voice he murmured these solemn words, “ Sire, your 
father is dying.” Don Juan rose, making a sign to his guests 
which might have been interpreted thus, “ Excuse me, but this 
is not a thing which happens every day.” 

Does not a father’s death often startle a young man in the 
midst of the splendours of life, in the very lap of frenzied 
debauchery? Death is as sudden in his whims as is a courte- 
san, but he is truer — he has never deceived any man. 

When the door of the hall was shut, and Don Tuan was passing 
through a long gloomy gallery, where the cold was as great as 
the gloom, he bethought him of his part as a son, and strove 
to wear a mask to fit the filial character ; for his mirth he had 
thrown aside with his napkin. The night was black. The 
silent servant who led the young man to the chamber of death 
lighted the way so dimly that Death was able, by the help of 
the cold, and the silence, and the gloom — and perhaps too of a 
recoil from drunkenness — to insinuate certain reflections into 
the mind of the reveller. He examined his life and grew 
thoughtful, as a man at law with another, while he is on his 
way to the court. 


4 


BALZAC : 


Bartolomeo Belvidero, the father of Don Juan, was an old 
man of ninety years, who had spent almost all his life in the 
mazes of commerce. Having often travelled over the magic 
countries of the East, he had there acquired immense riches 
and knowledge, more precious, he said, than gold or diamonds ; 
indeed for these he now cared scarcely at all. “ I prefer a 
tooth to a ruby, and power to knowledge,” he sometimes cried, 
and smiled as he spoke. This kind father loved to hear Don 
Juan relate his youthful frolics, and would say, jestingly, as he 
lavished his gold upon him, “My dear child, only commit such 
follies as will really amuse thee.” He was the only old man 
who has ever taken pleasure in the sight of another man's 
youth ; his paternal love cheated his white hairs as he con- 
templated the brilliancy of this young life. At the age of sixty 
Belvidero became enamoured of an angel of peace and beauty ; 
Don Juan was the only fruit of this late and short-lived love. 
Now for fifteen years the old man had deplored the loss of his 
dear J uana ; it was to this affliction of his old age that his numer- 
ous servitors and his son attributed the strange habits which he 
had contracted. Shut up in the most incommodious wing of 
his palace, he very rarely left it, and Don Juan himself could 
not penetrate into his father’s apartment without having first 
obtained his permission. If this voluntary anchorite walked in 
his own palace or through the streets of Ferrara, he seemed to 
be searching for something he had lost. He walked as though 
in a dream, with undecided steps, preoccupied, like a man at 
war with an idea or a memory. 

While the young man gave the most sumptuous banquets 
and the palace rang with bursts of merriment— while horses 
champed their bits in the courtyard and pages quarrelled over 
their dice on the steps — Bartolomeo ate seven ounces of bread 
a day and drank water. If he required a little game, it was 


s 


DON JUAN 

only to give the bones to a black spaniel, which was his con- 
stant companion. He never complained of the noise ; during 
bis sickness, if the sound of the horn and the baying of dogs 
startled him while he slept, he would only say, “Ah ! it is Don 
Juan returning!” So complacent and indulgent a father was 
never met with before ; thus the young Belvidero, being wont 
to treat him without consideration, had all the faults of spoilt 
children. He lived with Bartolomeo as a capricious courtesan 
lives with an old lover ; he gained indulgence for impertinences 
by a smile ; he sold him his good humour, and only allowed his 
love. As Don Juan reconstructed in thought the picture of his 
youth, he perceived that it would be difficult to find the kind- 
ness of his father at fault. Feeling a sort of remorse arise in 
the depth of his heart at the moment he was passing through 
the gallery, he almost felt he could forgive his father for having 
lived so long ; he returned to some sentiment of filial piety 
just as a robber turns to honesty when the enjoyment of a suc- 
cessfully stolen million becomes a possibility. The young man 
had soon passed through the cold and lofty halls which composed 
his father’s apartment. After having experienced the effects of a 
damp, chill atmosphere, and inhaled the dense air and the musty 
odour given out by the ancient tapestries and dusty presses, 
he found himself in the old man’s chamber, before a bed of 
sickness close to a fire almost extinct. A lamp, placed upon a 
table of Gothic design, shed its light in fitful gleams, now 
brightly, now faintly upon the bed, and thus displayed the old 
man’s face under ever-varying aspects. The cold whistled 
through the ill-fitting casements, and the snow-flakes made a 
sullen murmur as they scourged the panes. This scene formed 
so striking a contrast to the scene Don Juan had just left that 
he could not restrain a shudder. Then he grew cold, for as he 
approached the bed an unwonted flood of light, blown by a 


6 


BALZAC. 


gust of wind, lit up the head of his father : the features were 
distorted, the skin clung closely to the bones, its greenish tint 
rendered still more horrible by the whiteness of the pillow 
whereon the old man lay ; the open, toothless mouth was 
drawn with pain, and let slip between it sighs whose dolorous 
depth was sustained by the echoing howls of the tempest. 
In spite of these signs of dissolution, there beamed from this 
head an incredible character of power ; a mighty spirit was at 
war with Death. The eyes, hollowed by sickness, preserved a 
strange steadfastness ; it seemed as though Bartolomeo would 
have slain with his last look an enemy sitting at the foot of his 
bed. This look, fixed and frigid, was the more frightful 
because the head remained as immovable as a skull upon a 
physician’s table. The entire body indicated by the bed- 
clothes showed that the old man’s limbs also lay as rigid as 
the head. The whole was dead except the eyes. Moreover, 
the sounds that issued from his mouth had something auto- 
matic in them. 

Don Juan felt a certain shame at coming to his father’s 
death-bed still wearing the bouquet of a harlot in his breast, 
and carrying thither the perfumes of a banquet and the odours 
of wine. “Thou art enjoying thyself,” said the old man, when 
he saw it was his son. At this moment the clear light voice of 
a singer, who held the banqueters spell-bound, sustained by 
the harmony of the viol on which she accompanied herself, 
rose above the rattle of the hurricane, and rang even in this 
funereal chamber. Don Juan affected not to hear the answer 
thus brutally given in the affirmative to his father. 

“ I blame thee not, my child,” said Bartolomeo. 

The kindness of these words caused a pang to Don Juan; 
he could not forgive his father for the poignancy of his 
goodness. 


DON JUAN 7 

“My father, think of the remorse I must feel,” said he 
hypocritically. 

“Poor Juanino,” replied the dying man in a muffled voice, 
“ I have always been so kind to thee that thou couldest not 
desire my death ?” 

“Oh,” cried Don Juan, “if it were only possible for me to 
restore life to you by giving you up a part of my own ! ” 

(“ One can always say those sort of things,” thought the 
reveller ; “it is as though I offered the world to my mistress.”) 
He had scarcely conceived this thought when the old spaniel 
barked. The intelligence of this voice made Don Juan 
s’. udder ; it seemed to him as though the dog had understood 
_ - him. 

“ I knew well, my son, that I could count upon thee, ,,> cried 
i he dying man. “I shall live. Thou shalt have thy wish. I 
ihall live without depriving thee of a single one of the days 
allotted thee.” 

“ He is delirious,” said Don Juan to himself. Then he 
added aloud : “ Yes, my dearest father, you will live, assuredly, 
as long as I live, for your image will be always in my heart.” 

“ I was not speaking of that sort of life,” said the old noble. 
He collected all his strength and sat up, for he was troubled 
by one of those suspicions that only rise from under the pillows 
of the dying. “ Listen ! my son,” he replied in a voice 
enfeebled by this last effort ; “I am no more ready to die 
than thou art ready to give up thy falcons, and dogs, and 
horses, and wine, and mistresses, and gold.” 

“ I can well believe it,” thought his son again, as he knelt 
down by the bedside and kissed one of the corpse-like hands of 
Bartolomeo. “ But,” he answered aloud, “ my father, my dear 
father, we must submit to the will of God.” 

“ God is I,** muttered the old man. 


s 


BALZAC. 


“ Blaspheme not,” cried the reveller, when he saw the look 
of menace which his father’s features assumed. “ I beseech 
you take care; you have received Extreme Unction; I could 
never be comforted if I saw you die in sin ! ” 

“Listen to me, wilt thou?” cried the dying man, his mouth 
drawn with anger. 

Don Juan held his peace. A horrible silence reigned. 
Across the dull whirr of the snow the harmonies of that 
ravishing voice and the viol still travelled, faint as the dawn 
of day. The dying man smile l. 

“ Thou hast bidden singers, thou hast brought music hither ; 

I thank thee. A banquet ! Women young and beautiful, with 
white skins and raven locks! — all the pleasures of life 1 Bid 
them stay ; I am about to be born again.” 

“The delirium is at its height,” thought Don Juan. 

“ I have discovered a means of bringing myself to life again. 
Here 1 Look in the drawer in the t ible ; it opens by pressing 
a spring hidden under the griffon.” 

“ I have found it, my father.” 

“ Good ! take out a little flask of rock crystal.” 

“ It is here.” 

“ I spent twenty years in . . .” At this moment the old 

man felt his end approaching ; he collected all his strength and 

said, “As soon as I have given my last breath, rub me 

entirely all over with that water and I shall come to life 

again.” 

“There is very little of it,” answered the young mart. 

Though Bartolomeo could no longer speak, he still retained 
the faculties of sight and hearing ; at these words his head 
turned round towards Don Juan with a sudden spasmodic start, 
his neck remained stretched out like the neck of a marble 
statue condemned by the thought of the sculptor always to look 


DON JUAN. 


to one side, his eyes were dilated and had acquired a hideous 
stare. He was dead, dead as he lost his last, his only illusion. 
He had sought a refuge in the heart of his son ; he found it a 
charnel-house more hollow than men are wont to dig for their 
dead. Thus it was that his hair stood on end with horror, the 
convulsion in his eyes still spoke. It was a father rising in 
rage from his tomb to demand vengeance at the hand of God 
upon his son ! 

“ Hm ! The old man is done for,” said Don Juan. 

In his hurry to hold up the mysterious crystal before the 
light of the lamp, like a drunkard consulting his bottle at the 
end of a meal, he had not seen the pallor fall upon his 
father’s eyes. The dog gaped as he gazed alternately at the 
elixir and his dead master, while Don Juan glanced to and 
fro at his father and the phial. The lamp cast up its flickering 
flames, the silence was profound, the viol was dumb. Belvidero 
shivered ; he thought he saw his father move. Terrified by 
the set expression of those accusing eyes, he closed them as 
he would have shut a shutter shaken by the wind on an 
autumn night. He stood erect, motionless, lost in a world 
of thoughts. All at once a sharp sound, like the cry of a 
rusty spring, broke the silence. Don Juan, startled, almost 
dropped the phial. Sweat colder than the steel of a dagger 
broke from every pore. A cock of painted wood rose on the 
top of a clock and crowed three times. It was one of those 
ingenious machines which the students of those days used, 
to wake them at a fixed hour for their studies. The dawn 
already glowed red through the casements. Don Juan had 
spent ten hours in meditation. The old clock was more 
faithful in its service than was he in his duty towards 
Bartolomeo. This mechanism was composed of wood, and 
pulleys, and cords, and wheels, while he had within him 


10 


BALZAC . 


that mechanism peculiar to man which is called a heart. 
Not to run any risk of spilling the mysterious liquid, Don 
Juan, the sceptic , placed it again in the little drawer of the 
Gothic table. At this solemn moment he heard in the galleries 
a stifled commotion ; there were confused voices, muffled 
laughter, light footsteps, the rustling of silk— in short, the din 
of a merry troop trying to compose themselves. The door 
opened, and the Prince, the friends of Don Juan, the seven 
courtesans, and the singers appeared in the quaint disorder 
of dancers surprised by the light of morning, when the sun 
struggles with the paling flames of the candles. They were 
all come to offer the customary consolations to the young heir. 

“Ho! ho! poor Don Juan; can he really have taken this 
death to heart?” said the Prince in La Brambilla’s ear. 

“Weil, his father was very kind,” she answered. 

The nocturnal meditations of Don Juan, however, had 
imprinted so striking an expression upon his features that it 
imposed silence on the group. The men stood motionless. 
The women, whose lips were parched with wine and whose 
cheeks were stained with kisses, knelt upon their knees and tried 
to pray. Don Juan could not help shivering at the sight; 
splendour, and mirth, and laughter, and song, and youth, 
and beauty, and power, the whole of life personified thus 
prostrate before the face of Death. 

But in this adorable Italy debauchery and religion were 
then so closely coupled that there, religion was a debauch, 
and debauchery a religion ! The Prince pressed Don Juan’s 
hand with unction ; then, all the faces having simultaneously 
assumed the same grimace, half sadness, half indifférence, 
this phantasmagoria disappeared and left the hall empty. 
Verily, it was an image of life. As they descended the stairs 
the Prince said to La Rivabarella: “Who would have thought 


DON JUAN. it 

that Don Juan’s impiety was all a sham? Yet it seems he did 
love his father !” 

“ Did you notice the black dog?” asked Brambilla. 

“Well, he is immensely rich,” remarked Bianca Cavatolino, 
smiling. 

“What’s that to me?” cried the proud Veronese, she who 
had crushed the comfit box. 

“What’s that to you?” cried the duke. “With his crowns he 
is as much a prince as I am.” 

At first, swayed by a thousand thoughts, Don Juan wavered 
between several plans. After having taken count of the 
treasure amassed by his father, towards evening he returned 
to the mortuary chamber, his soul big with a hideous egoism. 
In the apartment he found all the servants of the house busy 
collecting the ornaments of the state bed, on which their late 
lord was to be exposed on the morrow, in the midst of a 
superbly illuminated chapel ; a grand sight which the whole 
of Ferrara would come to gaze at; Don Juan made a sign 
and his servants stopped, trembling and discomfited. 

“Leave me here, alone,” said he in an altered voice; “you 
need not return until I have gone.” 

When the steps of the old serving man, who was the last to 
go out, only sounded very faintly on the flag stones, Don 
Juan barred the door precipitately ; then, certain that he was 
alone, he cried out : “ Let us try ! ” The corpse of Don 
Belvidero was laid on a long table. In order to hide from every 
eye the hideous spectacle of a corpse of such extreme decrepi- 
tude and leanness that it was almost a skeleton, the embalmers 
had placed a cloth over it, which enveloped it entirely, with 
the exception of the head. This sort of mummy lay in the 
middle of the room ; the cloth, naturally flexible, indicated 
vaguely the gaunt, stiff, sharp form of the limbs. The face was 


i 


12 


Balzac: 


already marked with large livid stains, showing the necessity 
of finishing the embalming. In spite of his armour of scep- 
ticism, Don Juan trembled as he took out the stopper of the 
magic crystal phial. When he had come up close to the head, 
he was compelled to wait a moment, he shivered so. But this 
young man had been early and skilfully corrupted by the 
manners of a dissolute court ; an idea worthy of the Duke of 
Urbino gave him* courage, and a feeling of keen curiosity 
spurred him on ; it even seemed as if the fiend had whispered 
the words which re-echoed in his heart : “Anoint one eye!” 
He took a cloth, moistened it sparingly with the precious liquid, 
and rubbed it gently over the right eyelid of the corpse. The 
eye opened. 

“Ah ! ah!” exclaimed Don Juan, pressing the phial in his 
hands as In a dream we cling to a branch by which we hang 
over a precipice. 

He saw an eye full of life, the eye of a child in the head of 
a corpse ; in it the light quivered as though in the depth of a 
limpid pool ; protected by the beautiful black lashes, it 
sparkled like those strange lights that the traveller sees in a 
desert country upon a winter’s night. This eye of fire seemed 
eager to start out upon Don Juan ; it thought, accused, judged, 
condemned, menaced, spoke ; it cried aloud, it bit. Every 
human passion pulsated in it ; the tenderest supplication, a 
kingly wrath, the love of a maiden entreating her tormentors, 
the searching look on his fellows of the man who treads the last 
step to the scaffold. So much of life beamed in this fragment 
of life that Don Juan drew back in terror. He walked up and 
down the room ; he dared not look upon this eye, yet he saw it 
on the floor, in the tapestries. The room was strewn with 
spots full of fire, and life, and intelligence. Everywhere 
gleamed those eyes ; they seemed to bay at his heels ! 


DON JUAN 13 

“ He would certainly have lived another hundred years,” he 
cried involuntarily at the moment when, brought back by some 
diabolic influence to his father’s side* he found himself gazing 
at this luminous spark. 

All at once the intelligent eyelid shut and opened again hastily ; 
it was like the look of a woman who gives consent. If a voice 
had cried out “Yes!” Don Juan could not have been more 
terrified. 

“What am I to do?” thought he. He had the courage to 
try and close the pallid eyelid, but his efforts were useless. 

“Tear it out? That might be parricide perhaps?” he 
pondered. 

“ Yes,” said the eye, quivering with astounding irony. 

“ Ha ! ha ! ” cried Don Juan, “ there is sorcery in it.” 

And he drew near to tear out the eye. A large tear rolled 
down the hollow cheeks of the corpse, and fell on Belvidero’s 
hand. 

J * It burns,” he cried, as he wiped it off. 

This struggle was as tiring as if, like Jacob, he had been 
wrestling with an angel. 

At last he rose, saying to himself, “ If only there is no; 
blood 1 ” Then summoning up all the courage necessary to be 
a coward, he tore out the eye, and crushed it in a cloth ; he did 
not dare to look at it. 

He heard a sudden, terrible groan. The old spaniel 
expired with a howl. 

“ Could it have been in the secret ?” thought Don Juan, looking 
at the faithful animal. 

Don Juan passed for a dutiful son. He erected a monument 
of white marble over his father’s tomb, and entrusted the 
execution of the figures to the most celebrated artists of the time. 
He did not feel perfectly at his ease until the day when the 


14 


BALZAC ; 


statue of h'.s lather, kneeling before Religion, lay, an enormous 
pile, over bis grave. In its depth was buried the only remorse 
which had ever, in moments of physical weariness, touched the 
surface of his heart. As he reviewed the immense riches 
amassed by the aged orientalist, Don Juan grew careful ; 
had not the power of wealth gained for him two human lives? 
His sight penetrated to>the depth and scrutinised the elements 
of social Jife, embracing the world the more completely in his 
gaze, because he looked upon it from the -other side of the tomb. 
He analyzed men and things only to have finished, once and 
for ever, with the Past, shotvn-forth by History ; with the Present, 
represented by Law ; with the Future, revealed by Religion. He 
took matter and the soul, he cast them into the crucible, and 
found— Nothing. From thenceforth he became Don Juan ! 

Young and handsome, master of the illusions of life, he flung 
himself into it, despising yet possessing himself of the world. 
His happiness could not consist in that bourgeois felicity which 
is nourished on an occasional sop, the treat of a warming-pan 
in the winter, a lamp at night, and new slippers every three 
months. No; he seized on existence like an ape snatches a nut, 
but without amusing himself for long with the common husk, 
he skilfully stripped it ofiQ in order to discuss the sweet and 
luscious kernel within. The poetry and the sublime transports 
of human passion did not seem worth a rap to him. 

He was never guilty of the fault of men of power who some- 
times imagine that little souls believe in great ones, and so 
think to exchange high thoughts of the future for the small 
change of our transient notions. He was quite able to walk as 
they do, with his feet on the earth, and his head in the skies; 
but he preferred to sit down and parch under his kisses the 
fresh, tender, perfumed lips of many women ; for, like Death, 
wherever lie. passed he devoured all without shame, desiring a 


DON JUAN. 1 5 

love of full possession, oriental, of pleasures lasting long and 
gladly given. In women he loved not themselves, but woman \ 
He made irony the natural habit of his sôul. When his 
mistresses used their couch as a step whereby to climb into the 
heavens and lose themselves in the lap of intoxication and 
ecstasy, Don Juan followed them, as. grave, sympathetic, and 
sincere as any German student. But he said /, while his 
mistress, lost in her delight* said XVel- He knew perfectly the 
art of being beguiled by a woman. He was always strong 
enough to make, her believe that he trembled like a school-boy 
at a ball, when he says to his first partner, “Do you like 
dancing?” But he could storm too, on occasion, and draw his 
sword to some purpose ; he had vanquished great captains. 
There was raillery in his simplicity, and laughter iri his tears— 
for he could shed tears at any moment— like a woman, when 
she says to her husband, “ Give me a carriage, or I know I 
shall go into a consumption.” To merchants the world is a 
bale or a heap of bills of exchange ; for most young men k is a 
woman ; for some women it is a man ; for certain minds it is a 
drawing-room, a clique, a district, a town; for Don Juan the 
whole universe was himself. A model of grace and high breed- 
ing, with all the charm of wit, he moored his bark to every 
bank, but when he took a pilot on board he only went whither 
he chose to be steered. 

The longer he lived the more he doubted. By studying 
men, he discovered that courage is often rashness ; pru- 
dence, poltroonery ; generosity, diplomacy ; justice, iniquity ; 
scrupulousness, stupidity ; honour, a convention ; and by a 
strange fatality he perceived that those who are truly honour- 
able, of fine feeling, just, generous, prudent, and - courageous, 
gain no consideration among men.— “ What a heartless jest 1” 
thought he ; “ it cannot be made by a God.” So he renounced 


BALZAC. 


16 Mi- 

abetter. world, never doffed his hat at the sound of a Name, 
and looked upon the stone saints in the Churches as works of 
art. But comprehending the organisation of human societies, 
he never did too much to offend their prejudices, because he 
knew that he was not so powerful as their executioner. He 
deflected their laws with that grace«and esprit so well described 
in his scene with Monsieur Dimanche j in fact, he was 
the type of the Don Juan of Molière, of the Faust of 
Goethe, of the Manfred of Byron, and of the Melmoth 
of Maturin, grand figures drawn by the greatest geniuses 
of Europe, to which the lyre of Rossini will some day 
perhaps be wanting, no less than the harmonies of Mozart. 
Terrible images, perpetuated by the principle of evil ever 
existent in man, images of which copies are found in every 
age ; whether the type enters into treaty with man and 
becomes incarnate in Mirabeau ; whether it is content to 
work in silence like Bonaparte, or squeezes the world in the 
press of its irony like the divine Rabelais ; or again, whether 
it jests at beings, instead of. insulting things, like Le Maréchal 
de Richelieu ; or better still perhaps, mocks both men and 
things at once, like the most ( celebrated of our ambassadors. 
»But*tho profound genius of Dpn Juan Belvidero summed up 
in advance all these geniuses. He made a jest of every- 
thing. His life was one mockery which embraced men, 
things, institutions, and ideas. ' As to eternity, after having 
talked familiarly for half-an-hour with the Pope, Julius II., 
at the end of the conversation he said to him, laughing : “ If 
it is absolutely necessary to chooàe, I would rather believe in 
God than the Devil ; power united to goodness always offers 
more resources than the genius of evil.” 

“Yes, but it is God’s will that we should do penance in this 
world. 


» » a 


DON JUAN. ; t 7 

“Ah, you are always thinking of your indulgences,” answered 
Belvidero. “ Well, £.1 have a whole existence in reserve 
wherein to repent pf the faults of my former life !” 

“Ah! if you . undérs&nd old age in that sense,” said the 
Pope, “you run afehance of canonisation.” 

“After your elevation to the papacy all things are credible.” 
And they went to watch the workmen building the immense 
basilica dedicated to Saint Peter. 

Saint Peter is the man of genius who built up our double 
power,” said the Pope to Don Juan; “he deserves this 
monument. But' sometimes at night I think that a deluge 
will pass its sponge over it all, and the world will have to 
begin again—” 

Don Juan and the Pope began to laugh ; they understood 
each other. A fool would have gone the next day to enjoy 
himself with Julius II. at Raphael’s or in the delicious Villa-» 
Madama ; but Belvidero went to see him pontificate, in order to 
be convinced of his doubts. At an orgy, Della Rovere would 
have been capable of criticising or confuting the Apocalypse. 

However, I did not undertake this legend to furnish 
materials to those desirous of writing memoirs of the life 
of Don Juan; it is designed to prove to all decent people 
that Belvidero did not die in a duel with a stone, as some 
lithographers would have us believe. When Don Juan had 
reaiched the age of sixty he went and took up his abode in 
Spain. There, in his old age, he married a young and lovely 
Andalusian, but he purposely made neither a good husband 
nor a good father. He had observed that we are never so 
tenderly loved as by women for whom we scarcely care at 
all. Dona Elvira had been piously brought up by an old 
aunt, in a castle some few leagues from San Lucar, in the 
wilds of Andalusia; she was a paragon of devotion and grace. 


BALZAC. 


18 

Don Juan divinea that this young girl would make a wife 
who would fight against a passion for a long time before she 
yielded, so he hoped to be able to preserve her virtuous until 
1rs death. It was a grim jest, a game of chess which he 
l ad determined to reserve to play during his old age. Fore- 
warned by all the mistakes of his father Bartolomeo, Don 
Juan resolved to make the least actions of his old age con- 
tribute to the success of the drama which was to be played 
out upon his death-bed. With this end in view, he buried 
the greater part of his riches in the cellars of his palace at 
Ferrara, which he seldom visited. As to the other half, he 
devoted it entirely to purchasing an annuity, in order that 
his wife and children might have an interest in the continuance 
of his life, a kind of roguery which it would have been well 
for Don Bartolomeo himself if he had practised; but for Don 
Juan this Machiavelesque speculation was scarcely neces- 
sary. The young Felipe Belvidero grew up as conscientious 
and religious a Spaniard as his father was impious, in 
virtue perhaps of the proverb: M A miser breeds a spend- 
thrift son.” 

The Abbot of San Lucar was chosen by Don Juan to 
direct the consciences of the Duchess of Belvidero and of 
Felipe. This ecclesiastic was a holy man, of a fine figure, 
admirably proportioned, with beautiful black eyes ; in fact 
he had the head of a Tiberius, fatigued with fasts, pale with 
penance, and tempted daily as are all men who live in 
solitude. The old noble hoped perhaps still to be able to 
kill a monk before finishing his first lease of life. But whether 
it was that the priest was as strong as Don Juan himself, 
or that Dona Elvira possessed more prudence or virtue than 
Spain usually bestows upon her daughters, Don Juan was 
constrained to spend his last days like an old country curé 


DON JUAN. 


19 


without a single scandal in his house. At times he took 
pleasure in finding his son or his wife at fault in their religious 
duties, for he willed despotically that they should perform all 
the obligations imposed on the faithful by the Court of Rome. 
In fact he was never so happy as when he was listening to 
the gallant priest, Dona Elvira, and Felipe engaged in 
discussing some point of conscience. However, in spite of 
the prodigious care which the Senor Don Juan Belvidero 
bestowed upon his person, the days of his decrepitude drew 
on ; with this age of trouble came the cries of impotence, 
cries the more heartrending because of all the rich memories 
of his turbulent youth and voluptuous manhood. This man, 
who had reached the last degree of cynicism, — to induce 
others to believe in laws and principles at which he scoffed, — 
slept at night on the doubt of a Perhaps! 

This model of fine breeding, this aristocratic athlete in 
debauchery, this paragon of gallantry, this gracious flatterer 
of women whose hearts he had twisted as a peasant twists 
an osier band, this man of genius, was plagued with catarrh, 
pestered by sciatica, a martyr to the agonies of gout. 

He saw his teeth depart, as the fairest and most beautifully 
dressed ladies depart one by one at the end of a festival and 
leave the halls empty and deserted. Then his sinuous hands 
trembled, his graceful legs tottered; at last one evening 
apoplexy squeezed his neck with her icy, crooked fingers. 
After this fatal day he became harsh and morose. He found 
fault with the devotion of his wife and son, asserting some- 
times that the touching and delicate care which they lavished 
upon him was only given because he had sunk all his fortune 
in an annuity. Then Elvira and Felipe would shed bitter 
tears and redouble their caresses upon the malicious old 
man, and then his voice would grow affectionate to them 


20 


BALZAC. 


and he would say: “My dear, my dear wife, you forgive me 
both, do you not? I tease you a little. Alas! good God! 
why dost Thou use me to try these two heavenly creaturës? 
I, who ought to be their joy, I am their scourge.” 

In this way he chained them to his bedside, making them 
forget whole months of impatience and cruelty by one hour, 
when he would display for them ever new treasures of 
favour and false tenderness. This paternal system brought 
him infinitely more success than the system formerly used 
in his case by his father had brought him. At last he 
reached such a pitch of disease that, in order to put him to 
bed, they had to manœuvre him like a felucca entering a 
dangerous channel. Then the day of his death arrived. 
This brilliant and sceptical personage, whose intellect alone 
survived the most horrible of all destructions, found himself 
between his two antipathies, a physician and a confessor; 
but even with them he was gay. Was there not for him 
a light shining behind the veil of the future? Upon this 
veil — of lead for others, but transparent for him — the joyous, 
ravishing delights of youth played like shadows. 

It was a beautiful summer evening when Don Juan felt the 
approach of death. The Spanish sky was exquisitely clear, 
the orange trees scented the air, the stars shed their bright and 
freshening beams, nature seemed to give him sure pledges for 
his resurrection, a pious and obedient son watched him with 
looks of respect and affection. About eleven o’clock he 
desired to be alone with this ingenuous youth. 

“Felipe,” said he, in a voice so tender and affectionate that 
the young man trembled and shed tears of joy. Never before 
had this stern father thus pronounced the word “Felipe.” 
“ Listen to me, my son,” continued the dying man. “ I am 
a great sinner. So during the whole of my life I have thought 


DON JUAN 2ï 

of my death. Formerly I was a friend of the great Pope 
Julius II. That illustrious Pontiff, fearing lest the excessive 
excitation of my senses should cause me to commit some mortal 
sin between the moment of my receiving the holy oils and my 
latest breath, made me a present of a phial in which there is 
preserved some of the holy water which gushed out of the rock 
in the desert. I have kept the secret of this diversion of the 
treasure of the church, but I am authorised to reveal this 
mystery to my son, in articulo mortis. You will find this phial 
in the drawer of the Gothic table which has always stood at my 
bedside. The precious crystal will serve for you too, my 
beloved Felipe. Swear to me on your eternal salvation to 
execute my orders exactly.” 

Felipe looked at his father. Don Juan understood the 
expression of human feeling too well not to die in peace on the 
credit of such a look, just as his father had died in despair on 
the credit of his. 

“Thou deservest another father,” replied Don Juan. “I 
must confess to thee, my child, that at the moment the worthy 
Abbot of San Lucar was administering the viaticum to me, 
I thought of the incompatibility of two powers as extensive as 
God’s and the devil’s.” 

“ Oh 1 my father ! ” 

« And I said to myself that, when Satan makes his peace, he 
will be bound, unless he is a wretched scoundrel, to stipulate for 
the pardon of his adherents. This thought haunts me. I shall 
go to hell, my son, if thou dost not fulfil my wishes.” 

« Oh ! tell me, father, quickly ! ” 

“As soon as I have closed my eyes,” replied Don Juan, 
“which will be in a few minutes perhaps, take my body, even 
while it is still warm, and stretch it out on a table in the middle 
of this room. Then extinguish this lamp, the light of the stars 


22 


BALZAC ; 


will be sufficient for thee. Strip me of my clothes ; and while 
thou recitest Paters and Aves, and raisest up thy soul to God, 
take care to moisten, with this holy water, my eyes, my lips, 
my whole head first, then all the members of my body in 
succession ; but, my dear son, the power of God is so great, 
thou must not be astonished at anything 1” 

Here Don Juan, who felt death approaching, added in a 
terrible voice : 

“ Hold the phial tight !” then he expired gently in the arms 
of a son whose tears ran in copious streams over his pale, 
ironical countenance. It was about midnight when Don Felipe 
Belvidero placed the corpse of his father upon the table. After 
having kissed the menacing brow and the grey locks, he 
extinguished the lamp. The soft glow cast by the moonlight 
lit up the country with its strange reflection, and allowed the 
pious Felipe to see but indistinctly his father’s corpse — a some- 
thing white amid the shade. The young man steeped a cloth 
in the liquid, and — absorbed in prayer meanwhile — faithfully 
anointed the venerated head amidst profound silence. He 
certainly heard an indescribable shivering, but he attributed it 
to the play of the breeze in the tree tops. When he had 
moistened the right arm, he felt himself closely embraced round 
the neck by a young and vigorous arm, and yet it was his 
father’s arm ! A piercing shriek burst from his lips, he 
dropped the phial, it broke the liquid evaporated. The 
servants of the castle came running in, armed with torches. 
This cry had terrified and astounded them ; it was as if the 
trumpet at the last judgment had shaken the universe. In 
a moment the room was full of people. The trembling crowd 
found Don Felipe in a swoon, held by his fathers powerful arm 
which clasped him round the neck. Then, marvellous to relate, 
the assistants saw the head of Don Juan, as young and beautiful 


DON JUAN i-3 

as Antinoiis ; a head with black hair, and brilliant eyes, and 
ruddy mouth straining horribly, and yet unable to move the 
skeleton to which it belonged. An old serving-man cried out, 
“A miracle!” The Spaniards all repeated, “A miracle!” 
Too pious to admit the mysteries of magic, Dona Elvira sent 
for the Abbot of San Lucar. When the Abbot had seen the 
miracle with his own eyes, being an Abbot who asked for 
nothing more than a chance of augmenting his revenues, 
he resolved to profit by it like a man of sense. He declared 
at once that the Senor Don Juan would undoubtedly be 
canonised, and appointed the ceremony of his apotheosis at his 
monastery, which, he said, would be called henceforth, San 
Juan de Lucar. At these words the head made a very funny 
grimace. 

The taste of the Spaniards for this kind of solemnity is so 
well known, that it ought not to be difficult to imagine the 
religious fripperies with which the Abbey of San Lucar 
celebrated the translation of the Blessed Don Juan Belvidero 
into its Church. Within a few diys of the death of this 
illustrious Senor, the miracle of his incomplete resurrection 
had been passed on so briskly from village to village within a 
radius of more than fifty leagues round San Lucar, that already 
it was as good as a play to see the sightseers on the road ; 
they came from all sides scenting the delicacy of a Te 
Deum chaunted with flambeaux. The ancient mosque of the 
monastery of San Lucar— a marvellous edifice built by the 
Moors, whose vaults had heard for three centuries the name 
of Jesus Christ substituted for the name of Allah— could not 
contain the crowd come together to witness the ceremony. 
Packed as close as ants, Hidalgos, in velvet mantles, armed 
with their good swords, stood upright round the pillars, 
finding no room to bend knees that bent in no other place but 


24 


BALZAC 


there ; bewitching peasant girls, clad in basquines which 
displayed their charms to advantage, gave their arms to old 
white-haired men ; young men, with passion in their eyes, 
found themselves side by side with elderly decked-out women. 
Then there were couples tremulous with happiness, curious 
maidens brought thither by their sweethearts, brides and 
bridegrooms married but a single night, children shyly hold- 
ing one another’s hands. Such was the company, rich in 
colour, brilliant in contrast, laden with flowers and enamel, 
making a soft hum of expectation in the silence of the night. 
The wide doors of the Church opened. Those who had come 
too late remained outside, and saw from afar through the three 
open portals a scene of which the vaporous decorations of our 
modern operas could not give the faintest idea. Pious women 
and unholy men, eager to gain the good graces of a new saint, 
lit thousands of tapers in his honour throughout the vast 
Church — interested lights which made the building seem as 
if enchanted. The black arches, the columns with their 
capitals, the deep chapels glittering with gold and silver, the 
galleries, the Saracen carving, the most delicate particles 
of this delicate sculpture were outlined in this excess of light, 
like the capricious figures formed in a glowing furnace. It was 
an ocean of fire, dominated, at the end of the Church, by the 
gilded choir, where towered the high altar rivalling in its glory 
the rising sun. But the splendour of the golden lamps, the 
silver candelabra, the banners, the tassels, the saints and the 
ex votoSy paled before the shrine wherein lay Don Juan. 
The corpse of that impious person glistened with jewellery, 
and flowers, and crystals, and diamonds, and gold, and feathers 
as white as the wings of a seraph ; — it replaced upon the altar 
r. picture of Christ. About him glittered numberless tapers, 
winch shot into the air their waves of lambent flame. The 


DON JUAN 2s 

worthy Abbot of San Lucar, vested in full pontificals, wearing 
his jewelled mitre, his rochet, and golden cross, was enthroned 
on a seat of imperial splendour above the choir. All his 
dergy, aged and passionless men with silver hair, clad in albs 
of fine linen, were gathered round him, like the holy confessors 
whom painters group about the Eternal. The precentor and 
the dignitaries of the Chapter, decorated with their brilliant 
insignia and all their ecclesiastical vanities, passed to and fro 
in the shadowy depth of the incense, like stars which roll 
through the firmament. When the hour of triumph was come, 
the bells awoke the echoes of the country, and this vast 
assembly raised to God the first cry of praise with which 
the Te Deum commences. It was indeed a sublime cry — 
voices clear and joyous, the voices of women in ecstasy, 
mingled with the deep strong voices of men, those thousands 
of voices in so stupendous a chorus that the organ could not 
surpass it with all the roaring of its pipes. But amid this 
tumult of sound, the penetrating notes of the choristers and 
the sonorous tones of the basses evoked a train of gracious 
thought, representing childhood and strength in an impassioned 
concert of human voices blended in one sentiment of Love. 

Te Deum laudamus ! 

From the midst of the Cathedral, black with the kneeling 
multitude, this chant rose like a light that bursts forth suddenly 
in the night, and the silence was broken as by the roar of a 
thunder-clap. The voices ascended with the clouds of incense 
as they spread their blue transparent veils upon the fantastic 
marvels of the architecture. All was splendour, perfume, light, 
and melody. At the moment when this anthem of love and 
thanksgiving rolled upwards towards the altar, Don Juan, too 
polite not to return thanks, and too humorous not to under- 
stand a joke, answered by a terrible laugh, and drew himself up 


26 


BALZAC, 


in his shrine. But the devil having put into his head that he 
ran a chance of being taken for an ordinary individual, a saint, 
a Boniface , a Pantaloon , he threw this melody of love into 
confusion by a howling to which were added the thousand 
voices of Hell. Earth spoke her blessings, and Heaven its 
curse. The ancient church trembled to its foundations. 

“ Te Deum laudamus ! ” cried the assembly. 

“ Go to all the devils, brute beasts that you are 1 God, God ! 
Carajos Demonios , idiotic creatures, with your silly old 
god !” 

And a torrent of curses rolled out like a stream of burning 
lava in an eruption of Vesuvius. 

“ Deus Sabaoth ! — Sabaoth ! ” cried the Christians. 

“You insult the majesty of Hell!” answered Don Juan, 
grinding his teeth. 

Presently the living arm succeeded in getting free out of the 
■rhrine, and menaced the assembly with gestures eloquent of 
mockery and despair. 

“The saint blesses us,” said the old women, the children, 
and the maidens betrothed — a credulous people. Truly, we 
are often deceived in our worship. The man of power mocks 
at those who compliment him, and sometimes compliments 
those whom in the depth of his heart he mocks. 

At the moment when the Abbot, prostrate before the altar, 
began to sing, “ S and e Johannes , ora pro nobis /” he heard 
quite distinctly, “ O coglionel ’ 

“ What’s going on then up there ?” said the sub-prior, seeing 
the shrine move. 

“ The saint is playing the devil,” answered the Abbot. 

Then the living head detached itself violently from the body 
which lived no longer, and fell on the yellow skull of the 
officiant. 


DON JUAN. 27 

“Dost thou remember Dona Elvira?” it cried, fastening its 
teeth in the Abbot’s head. 

The Abbot uttered a terrible shriek, which threw the 
ceremony into confusion. All the priests ran up together and 
crowded round their superior. 

“Idiot, say at least that there is a God!” screamed the 
voice. Just at that moment the Abbot, bitten in the brain, was 
about to expire. 


W. W. 


CHRIST IN FLANDERS. 


At a time somewhat indeterminate in Brabantine history, 
connection between the island of Cadzant and the coast of 
Flanders was kept up by a boat used for passengers to and fro. 
The capital of the island, Middleburg, afterwards so celebrated 
in the annals of Protestantism, counted then hardly two or 
three hundred hearths. Rich Ostend was then an unknown 
harbour, flanked by a village thinly peopled by a few fisher- 
folk, and poor dealers, and pirates who plied their trade with 
impunity. Nevertheless, the borough of Ostend, composed of 
about twenty houses and three hundred cottages, cabins, and 
hovels — made with the remains of wrecked ships — rejoiced in 
a governor, a militia, a gallows, a convent, and a burgomaster, 
in fact, all the institutions of advanced civilisation. Who was 
reigning at that time in Brabant, Belgium, and Flanders? On 
this point tradition is mute. 

Let us admit that this story is strangely imbued with that 
vagueness, indefiniteness, and love of the marvellous, which the 
favourite orators of Flemish vigils love to intermingle in their 
legends, as varied in poetry as they are contradictory in detail. 
Told from age to age, repeated from hearth to hearth, by 
grandmothers and by story-tellers night and day, this chronicle 
has received each century a different colouring. Like those 
buildings plained according to the architectural caprice of 


CHRIST IN FLANDERS. 


29 


each epoch, whose dark crumbling masses are a pleasure to 
poets alone, this legend would drive commentators, and 
wranglers over facts, words, and dates, to desperation. The 
narrator believes in it, as all superstitious souls in Flanders 
have believed in it, without being for that reason either more 
learned or more weak-minded. Only in the impossibility of 
harmonising all the different versions, here is the story, stripped 
perhaps of its romantic ncüvetê — for this it is impossible to 
reproduce ; — but still, with its daring statements disproved by 
history, and its morality approved by religion, its fantastic flowers 
of imagination, and hidden sense which the wise can interpret 
each to his own liking. Let each one seek his pasture therein, 
and take the trouble to separate the good grain from the tares! 

The boat which served to carry over the passengers from 
the island of Cadzant to Ostend, was just about to leave the 
village. Before undoing the iron chain which held his boat to 
a stone on the little jetty where people embarked, the skipper 
blew his horn several times to call the loiterers, for this journey 
was his last. Night was coming on, the last fires of the setting 
sun scarcely gave enough light to distinguish the coast of 
Flanders or the tardy passengers on the island wandering 
along the earthen walls which surrounded the fields or among 
the tall reeds of the marshes. The boat was full. “ What are 
you waiting for ? Let us be off I” they cried. Just then a man 
appeared a few steps from the jetty. The pilot, who had 
neither heard nor seen him approaching, was somewhat 
surprised. The passenger seemed to have risen from the 
earth on a sudden. He might have been a peasant sleeping in 
a field, waiting for the hour for starting, whom the horn had 
woken up. Was it a thief? or was it some one from the 
Custom House or police? When he arrived on the jetty to 
which the boat was moored, seven persons who were standing 


30 


BALZAC ; 


in the stern, hastened to sit down on the benches, in order to 
have them to themselves and prevent the stranger from 
seating himself among them. It was a sudden instinctive 
feeling, one of those aristocratic instincts which suggest them- 
selves to rich people. Four of these personages belonged to 
the highest nobility of Flanders. 

First of all, there was a young cavalier, with two beautiful 
greyhounds, wearing over his long hair a cap decked with 
jewels. He clinked his gilded spurs, and now and again curled 
his moustache, as he cast disdainful looks at the rest of the 
freight. 

Then there was a proud damosel, who carried a falcon on her 
wrist and spoke only to her mother or an ecclesiastic of high 
rank, a re’ative, no doubt. These persons made as much noise 
talking together as if they were the only people on the boat. 
All the same, next to them sat a man of great importance in 
the country, a fat merchant from Bruges, enveloped in a large 
mantle. His servant, armed to the teeth, kept by his side two 
bags full of money. Beside them was a man of science, a 
doctor of the University of Louvain, with his clerk. These 
people, who all despised one another, were separated from the 
bows by the rowers’ bench. 

When the late passenger put his foot into the boat he gave 
a swift look at the stern, but when he saw no room there he 
went to seek a place among the people in the bows. It was 
the poor who sat there. At the sight of a man bareheaded, 
whose brown cloth coat and fine linen shirt had no ornament, 
who held in his hand neither hat nor cap, with neither purse 
nor rapier at his girdle, all took him for a burgomaster — a 
good and gentle man, like one of those old Flemings whose 
nature and simple character have been so well rendered by the 
painters of their country. The poor passengers welcomed the 


CHRIST IN FLANDERS. 


3ï 

stranger with a respectful demeanour, which excited mocking 
whispers among the people in the stern. An old soldier, a man 
of toil and trouble, gave him his place on the bench, and sat 
himself at the end of the boat, keeping himself steady by put- 
ting his feet against one of the transverse beams which knit the 
planks together like the backbone of a fish. 

A young woman, a mother with her little child, who seemed 
to belong to the working-class of Ostend, moved back to make 
room for the new-comer. In this movement there was no trace 
either of servility or disdain. It was merely a mark of that 
kindliness by which the poor, who know so well how to appre- 
ciate a service, show their frank and natural disposition — so 
simple and obvious in the expression of all their qualities, good 
or bad. 

The stranger thanked them with a gesture full of nobility, 
and sat down between the young mother and the old soldier. 
Behind him was a peasant with his son, ten years old. A poor 
old woman, with a wallet almost empty, old and wrinkled, and in 
rags — a type of misery and neglect — lay in the prow, crouched 
upon a coil of ropes. One of the rowers, an old sailor, who 
had known her when she was rich and beautiful, had let her 
get in for what the people so beautifully call “ the love of God.” 

“ Thank you kindly, Thomas,” the old woman had said ; “ I 
will say two Paters and two Aves for you in my prayers this 
evening.” 

The skipper blew his horn once more, looked at the silent 
country, cast the chain into his boat, ran along the side to the 
helm, took the tiller, and stood erect ; then, having looked at 
the sky, called out in a loud voice to the rowers, when they 
were well in the open sea, “ Row hard, make haste ; the sea 
smiles evilly — the witch ! I feel the swell at the helm and the 
storm at my wound.” These words, spoken in the language of 


32 


BALZAC ; 


the sea — a tongue only understood of those accustomed to the 
sound of the waves — gave to the oars a hastened but ever- 
cadenced movement, as different from the former manner of 
rowing as the gallop of a horse from its trot. The fine people 
sitting at the stern took pleasure in seeing the sinuous arms, 
the bronzed faces with eyes of fire, the distended muscles, and ^ 
the different human forms working in unison, just to get them 
the quicker over this narrow strait. So far from being sorry 
for their labour, they pointed out the rowers to each other, 
and laughed at the grotesque expressions which their exertion 
printed on their anxious faces. In the prow, the soldier, the 
peasant, and the old woman, regarded the mariners with that 
kind of compassion natural to people who, living by toil, know 
its hard anguish and feverish fatigue. Besides, being accus- 
tomed to life in the open air, they all divined by the look of the 
sky the danger which threatened them ; so they were serious. 
The young mother was rocking her child to sleep, singing to it 
some old hymn of the church. 

“ If we do get over,” said the old soldier to the peasant, 

“ God will have taken a deal of trouble to keep us alive.” 

“ Ah ! He is master,” said the old woman ; “ but I think it is 
His good pleasure to call us to Himself. Do you see that light, 
there ?” and by a gesture of the head she pointed out the setting 
sun. Bands of fire streaked vividly the brown-red tinted clouds, 
which seemed just about to unchain a furious wind. The sea 
gave forth a suppressed murmur, a sort of internal groan, 
something like the growling of a dog whose anger will not be 
appeased. 

After all Ostend was not far off. Just now the sky and the 
sea showed one of those sights to which it is impossible for 
words or painting to give longer duration than they have in 
reality. Human creations like powerful contrasts, so artists 


CHRIST IN FLANDERS. 


33 


generally demand from nature its most brilliant aspects, 
despairing perhaps to be able to render the great and beauti- 
ful poetry of her ordinary appearance, although the human 
soul is often as profoundly moved by calm as by motion, by the 
silence as much as by the storm. 

There was one moment when every one on the boat was 
silent and gazed on the sea and sky, whether from presentiment 
or in obedience to that religious melancholy which comes 
over nearly all of us at the hour of prayer, at the fall of day, 
at the moment when nature is silent and the bells speak. The 
sea cast up a faint, white glimmer, but changing like the 
colour of steel; the sky was mostly grey; in the west long 
narrow spaces looked like waves of blood, whereas in the east 
glittering lines, marked as by a fine pencil, were separated 
from one another by clouds, folded like the wrinkles on an old 
man’s forehead. Thus the sea and the sky formed a neutral 
background, everything in half tints, which made the fires 
of the setting sun glare ominously. The face of nature 
inspired a feeling of terror. If it is allowable to interweave 
the daring hyperboles of the people into the written language, 
one might repeat what the soldier said, “Time is rolling 
away,” or what the peasant answered, that the sky had the 
look of a hangman. All of a sudden the wind rose in 
the west, and the skipper, who never ceased to watch the 
sea, seeing it swell towards the horizon, cried, “Ho, ho!” 
At this cry the sailors stopped immediately, and let their oars 
float. 

“The skipper’s right,” said Thomas. The boat, borne on 
the top of a huge wave, seemed to be descending to the bottom 
of the gaping sea. At this extraordinary movement and this 
sudden rage of the ocean the people in the stern turned pale, 
and gave a terrible cry, “ We perish.” 


34 


BALZAC. 


“ Not yet,” answered the skipper quietly. At this moment 
the clouds were rent in twain by the force of the wind exactly 
above the boat. The grey masses spread out with ominous 
quickness from east to west, and the twilight, falling straight 
down through a rent made by the storm-wind, rendered visible 
every face. The passengers, the rich and the noble, the sailors 
and the poor, all stopped one moment in astonishment at the 
aspect of the last comer. His golden hair, parted in the 
middle on his tranquil, serene forehead, fell in many curls on 
his shoulders, and outlined against the grey sky a face sublime 
in its gentleness, radiant with divine love. He did not despise 
death ; he was certain not to perish. But if at first the people 
at the stern had forgotten for an instant the tempest whose 
implacable fury menaced them, they soon returned to their 
selfish sentiments and lifelong habits. “ It’s lucky for him, 
that dolt of a burgomaster, that he does not know the danger 
we are all in. There he stands like a dog, and doesn’t seem to 
mind dying,” said the doctor. 

Hardly had he completed this judicious remark when the 
tempest unchained its legions; winds blew from every side, 
the boat spun round like a top, and the sea swamped 
it. 

“Oh, my poor child! my child! who will save my child?” 
cried the mother, in a heartrending voice. 

“You yourself,” replied the stranger. The sound of this 
voice penetrated the heart of the young woman, and put hope 
therein. She heard this sweet word, in spite of the raging of 
the storm, in spite of the shrieks of the passengers. 

“Holy Virgin of Perpetual Succour, who art at Antwerp, 
I promise you twenty pounds of wax and a statue if you will 
only get me out of this,” cried the merchant, falling on his 
knees upon his bags of gold. 


CHRIST IN FLANDERS. 


35 


“The Virgin is no more at Antwerp than she is here,” 
replied the doctor. 

“She is in heaven,” said a veice which seemed to come 
forth from the sea. 

“ Who spoke ? ” 

“The devil,” said the servant; “he’s mocking the Virgin of 
Antwerp.” 

“Shut up with your blessed Virgin,” said the skipper to the 
passengers ; “ take hold of the bowls and help me get the water 
out of the boat. As to you,” he continued, addressing the 
sailors, “row hard, we have a moment’s grace, and in the 
devil’s name, who has left you in this world until now, let us 
be our own Providence. This little strip of water is horribly 
dangerous, Î know, from thirty years’ experience. Is this 
evening the first time I have had a storm to deal with ? ” Then 
standing at the helm, the skipper continued to look alternately 
at the boat, the sea, and the sky. 

“ The skipper mocks at everything,” said Thomas, in a low 
voice. 

“Will God let us die with these wretched people?” asked 
the proud damosel of the handsome cavalier. 

“No! no! Noble damsel, listen to me.” He put his arm 
round her waist, and spoke in her ear. “I can swim — don’t 
say anything about it ; I will take you by your beautiful 
hair and bring you safely to the shore; but I can save you 
only.” 

The damosel looked at her old mother; the dame was on her 
knees asking absolution from the bishop, who was not listening 
to her. The cavalier read in the eyes of his beautiful mistress 
some faint sentiment of filial piety, so he said to her in a low 
voice, “Submit yourself to the will of God; if He wishes to call 
your mother to Himself, it will be doubtless for her happiness— 


36 BALZAC. 

in the other world he added, in a voice still lower, “and for 
ours in this.” 

The dame Rupelmonde possessed seven fiefs, besides the 
barony of Gâvres. The damosel listened to the voice of life, to 
the interests of love, speaking by the mouth of the handsome 
adventurer, a young miscreant who haunted churches, seeking 
for prey — either a girl to marry or else good ready money. 

The bishop blessed the waves and ordered them to be calm, 
not knowing exactly what to do ; he was thinking of his 
concubine awaiting him with a delicate feast, perhaps at 
this moment in her bath perfuming herself, or arraying 
herself in velvet, and fastening on her necklaces and jewels. 
So far from thinking of the powers of the church, and consoling 
these Christians, and exhorting them to trust in God, the 
perverse bishop mingled worldly regrets and words of lust with 
the sacred words of the Breviary. 

The light, which Jit up the pale faces, showed all their varying 
expressions, when the boat was borne up into the air by a wave, 
or cast down to the bottom of the abyss; then, shaken like a 
frail leaf, a plaything of the autumn wind, it cracked its shell, 
and seemed nigh to break altogether. Then, there were 
horrible cries alternating with awful silence. 

The demeanour of the people seated in the prow of the boat 
contrasted singularly with that of the rich and powerful in the 
stern. The young mother strained her child to her bosom 
every time that the waves threatened to engulf the frail bark ; 
but she held to the hope with which the words of the stranger 
had filled her heart : each time she turned her eyes towards this 
man she drank in from his face a new faith, the strong faith of 
a weak woman, the faith of a mother. Living by the divine 
word, the word of love, which had gone forth from this man, 
the simple creature awaited trustfully the fulfilment of the sort 


CHRIST IN FLANDERS. 


37 

of promise he had given her, and scarcely feared the tempest 
any more. Sticking to the side of the boat, the soldier ceased 
not to contemplate this singular being, on whose impassibility 
lie sought to model his own rough, tanned face, bringing into 
play all his intelligence and strength of will, whose powerful 
springs had not been vitiated in the course of a passive mechani- 
cal life. He was emulous to show himself tranquil and calm. 
A ter the manner of this superior courage, he ended by identify- 
ing himself in some measure with the secret principle of its 
interior power. Then his imagination became an instinctive 
fanaticism, a love without limit, a faith in this man, like that 
enthusiasm which soldiers have for their commander when he 
is a man of power, surrounded with the glory of victories, 
marching in the midst of the splendid prestige of genius. The 
poor old woman said in a low voice, “ Ah ! what a miserable 
sinner I am ! Have I not suffered enough to expiate the 
pleasures of my youth ? Miserable one, why hast thou led the 
gay life of a Frenchwoman ? why hast thou consumed the 
goods of God with the people of the Church, the goods of the 
poor ’twixt the drink shop and the pawn shop ? Ah ! how 
wicked I was ! Oh ! my God ! my God ! let me finish my hell 
in this world of misery. Holy Virgin, Mother of God, take pity 
on me.” 

“ Console yourself, mother, God is not a Lombard ; although 
I have killed here and there good people and wicked, I do not 
fear for the resurrection.” 

“Ah! Sir, how happy they are, those beautiful ladies who 
are near the bishop, holy man ! ” the old woman went on ; 
“they will have absolution from their sins. Oh! if I could 
only hear the voice o r a priest saying to me, ‘ Your sins are 
forgiven you,’ I could b lieve him.” 

The stranger turned towards her, and his look, full of charity, 


3 » 


BALZAC ; 


made her tremble. “ Have faith,” he said, “ and you will be 
saved.” 

“ May God reward you, good sir,” she answered. “ If you 
speak truly, I will go for you and for me on a pilgrimage to 
Our Lady of Loretto, barefooted.” 

The two peasants, father and son, remained silent, resigned, 
and submitting to the will of God, as people accustomed to 
follow instinctively, like animals, the convulsions of nature. 

So on one side there were riches, pride, knowledge, de- 
bauchery, crime, all human society such as it is made by arts, 
thought, and education, the world and its laws ; but also on 
this side, only shrieks, terror, the struggles of a thousand con- 
flicting feelings, with horrible doubt, — naught but the anguish 
of fear. And, towering above these, one powerful man, the 
skipper of the boat, doubting nothing, the chief, the fatalist 
king, making his own Providence, crying out for baling bowls 
and not on the Virgin to save him, defying the storm, and 
wrestling with the sea, body to body. 

At the other end of the boat, the weak : — the mother, holding 
to her bosom a little child, who smiled at the storm : — a wanton, 
once gay, now given over to horrible remorse : — a soldier, scarred 
with wounds, without other reward than his mutilated life, as a 
price for indefatigable devotion ; he had hardly a morsel of 
bread, steeped in tears ; all the same he laughed at everything, 
and marched on without care, happy when he could drown his 
glory at the bottom of a pot of beer, or was telling stories 
thereof to wondering children. He commended gaily to God 
the care of his future. Lastly, two peasants, people of toil and 
weariness, labour incarnate, the work on which the world lives ; 
these simple creatures were guileless of thought and its 
treasures, but ready to lose themselves utteily in a belief ; 
having a more robust faith, in that they had never discussed or 


CHRIST IN FLANDERS 


39 


analyzed it ; virgin natures, in whom conscience had remained 
pure and feeling strong. Contrition, misery, love, work had 
exercised, purified, concentrated, disculpated their will, the only 
thing which in man resembles that which sages call the soul. 

When the boat, piloted by the marvellous dexterity of the 
skipper, came almost in view of Ostend, fifty paces from the 
shore, it was driven back by the convulsion of the storm, and 
suddenly began to sink. The stranger with the light upon his 
face then said to this little world of sorrow, “ Those who have 
faith shall be saved ; let them follow me.” This man stood up 
and walked with a firm step on the waves. At once the 
young mother took her child in her arms and walked with him 
on the sea. The soldier suddenly stood to attention, saying in 
his rough language, “ By my pipe ! I follow you to the devil.” 
Then, without seeming astonished, he marched on the sea. 

The old prostitute, believing in the omnipotence of God, 
followed the man, and walked on the sea. The two peasants 
said, “ As they are walking on the sea, why should not we ? ” 
So they got up and hastened after the others, walking on the 
sea. 

Thomas wished to do likewise ; but his faith wavered, and he 
fell several times into the sea, but got out again, and after three 
failures, he too walked upon the sea. 

The daring pilot stuck like a leech to the bottom of his boat. 
The merchant had faith, and had risen, but he wanted to take 
his gold with him, and his gold took him to the bottom of the 
sea. Mocking at the charlatan and the imbeciles who listened 
to him, at the moment when he saw the stranger proposing to 
the passengers to walk on the sea, the man of science began to 
laugh, and was swallowed up in the ocean. The damosel was 
drawn down into the abyss by her lover. The bishop and the 
old lady went to the bottom, heavy with sin perhaps, heavier 


40 


BALZAC. 


still with unbelief and confidence in false images ; heavy with 
devotional practices, light of alms and true religion. 

The faithful troop, who trod with firm dry feet on the plain of 
the raging waters, heard around them the horrible howling 
of the storm ; great sheets of water broke in their path ; 
irresistible force rent the ocean in twain. Through the mist, 
these faithful ones perceived on the shore a little feeble light, 
which flickered in the window of a fisherman’s cabin. Each 
one as he marched bravely towards this light seemed to hear 
his neighbour crying through the roaring sea, “ Courage.’’ 
Nevertheless, absorbed each in his own danger, no one said a 
single word. And so they reached the shore. When they 
were all seated at the hearth of the fisherman, they sought in 
vain the guide who had a light upon his face. Seated upon 
the summit of a rock, at the base of which the hurricane had 
cast the pilot, stuck to his plank with all the strength of a 
sailor in the throes of death, the Man descended, picked up the 
shipwrecked man almost dashed to pieces ; then he said, 
as he held out a helping hand over his head, “ It is well 
this once, but do as thou hast done no more ; the example 
would be too bad.” He took the mariner on his shoulders, and 
carried him to the fisherman’s cottage. He knocked for the 
unfortunate man, that one should open to him the door of this 
humble refuge ; then the Saviour disappeared. 

In this place the sailors built the Convent of Mercy, where 
was long to be seen the prints that the feet of Jesus Christ 
had, it was said, left on the sand. 

Afterwards, when the French entered Belgium, some monks 
took away with them this precious relic, the testimony of the 
last visit Jesus ever paid to the earth. 


E. S. 


IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR. 


On the 22nd of January 1793, about eight o’clock in the 
evening, an old lady was walking down the steep incline which 
ends in front of the Church of Saint Laurent in Paris. It had 
snowed so hard all day that her footsteps were scarcely audible. 
The streets were deserted, and the feeling of fear which silence 
naturally inspires was increased by the remembrance of the 
terror under which France then groaned. The old lady had 
met no one on the way, and her eyesight, which had long been 
failing, did not allow of her distinguishing in the lamplight the 
few passers-by, scattered here and there like shadows along the 
immense vista of the faubourg. She went on bravely alone 
through the solitude, as if her age were a talisman to preserve 
her from all harm. When she had passed the Rue des Morts, 
she thought she could distinguish the firm heavy tread of a man 
walking behind her. She fancied it was not the first time that 
she had heard the sound. She was afraid, thinking that she 
was being followed, so she tried to walk faster than before, in 
order to reach a shop window in which the lights were bright 
enough for her to test the truth of her suspicions. As soon as 
she found herself in the gleam of light which streamed out 
horizontally from the shop, she turned her head suddenly and 
perceived a human form in the mist. This indistinct glimpse 
was enough ; a feeling of terror fell upon her ; she tottered 


42 


BALZAC^ 


for a moment under it, for now she felt certain that this 
stranger had accompanied her from the first step she had 
taken outside her own house. Her desire to escape from 
this spy gave her strength ; incapable of reasoning, she 
walked twice as fast as before, as though it were possible 
for her to distance a man necessarily much more active than 
she. After running for some minutes she reached a pastry- 
cook’s shop, went in and fell, rather than sat down, on a 
chair which was standing before the counter. As her hand 
rattled upon the latch a young woman seated at her em- 
broidery raised her eyes from her work, looked through the 
square pane of glass, and recognised the old-fashioned violet 
silk mantle which enveloped the old lady; then she hurriedly 
opened a drawer, as if to take out something that she had 
been keeping there for her. Not only did this movement 
and the expression of the young woman’s face betray her 
desire to get rid of the stranger as soon as possible, as a 
person whom she did not want to see, but she even let a 
gesture of impatience escape her when she found the drawer 
empty. Then, without looking at the lady, she went out 
hastily from behind the counter into the back part of the 
shop and called her husband ; he appeared at once. 

“Wherever have you put ?” she asked, mysteriously, 

glancing in the direction of the old lady, and not finishing the 
sentence. 

The pastry-cook could only see the old lady’s head-dress, 
a huge black bonnet, trimmed with violet ribands, but he 
looked at his wife as much as to say, “ Do you think I should 
leave a thing like that in your counter?” and, disappeared. 
His wife, surprised that the old lady sat so still and silent, 
went close up to her ; when she saw her she was seized with 
a feeling of compassion, and perhaps of curiosity too. Although 


IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR. 


43 


the old lady’s face was naturally pallid, like the face of a person 
who practises austerities in secret, it was easy to see that some 
recent emotion had rendered it even more pallid than usual. 
Her head-dress was so arranged as to hide her hair, which 
was white, no doubt from age, for it was evident that she did 
not wear powder, as there was no sign of it upon the collar of 
her dress. This absence of ornament gave her face a look 
of religious severity. Her features were proud and grave. 
In former times the manners and habits of people of rank 
were so different from those of the other classes, that it was 
easy then to distinguish a noble. Thus the young woman felt 
sure that the strange lady was a ci-devant , who had at one time 
been attached to the Court. 

“ Madame?” said she involuntarily, forgetting, in the respect 
she inspired, that the title was proscribed. 

The old lady made no answer, she kept her eyes fixed on 
the shop window, as if some terrible object were depicted on 
the glass. 

“What is the matter, citoyenne t n asked the shopman, 
returning at that moment. 

The worthy pastry-cook awoke the lady from her reverie, 
by handing her a small cardboard box, wrapt up in blue paper. 

“ Nothing, nothing, my friends,” said she in a gentle voice. 

She raised her eyes to the pastry-cook, as if to thank him by 
a look, but seeing a red cap upon his head, she cried aloud — 

“Ah ! you have betrayed me ! ” 

The young woman and her husband answered with a gesture 
of horror; the stranger blushed, either with relief, or with 
regret at having suspected them. 

“Forgive me!” she said at once, with childish sweetness. 
Then she drew a gold touts out of her pocket, and gave it 
to the pastry-cook. “ That is the price we agreed upon,” said 


44 


BALZAC ; 


she. There is a state of want recognised instirctively by 
those in want themselves. The pastry-cook and his wife 
looked at one another, interchanging the same thought as they 
glanced at the old lady. The louis was evidently her last. 
Her hands trembled as she held out the coin to them, she 
looked at it sorrowfully, but without grudging, though she 
seemed to be conscious of the full extent of the sacrifice. 
Hunger and misery were engraved upon her face in as legible 
characters as her ascetic habits and her present fear. Her 
clothes still bore the traces of past richness. She was dressed 
in faded silk, with carefully mended lace, and an elegant 
though worn mantle — in fact, the rags of former wealth. The 
shop-keepers, wavering between pity and self-interest, tried to 
soothe their conscience with words. 

“ Citoyenne , you seem very poorly.” 

“Would Madame like to take anything?*' asked the woman, 
catching up her husband’s words. 

“ We’ve got some very good broth,” said the pastry-cook. 

“ It’s so cold, perhaps you have caught a chill, Madame, com- 
ing here ; you are welcome to rest a bit and warm yourself.” 

“ We are not so black as the devil,” said the pastry-cook. 

Reassured by the friendly tone of the charitable pastry-cook, 
the lady admitted that she had been followed by a man, and 
was afraid to go home alone. 

“ Is that all?” replied the man with the red cap. “Wait a 
minute for me, citoyenne .” . 

He gave the louis to his wife ; then, moved by that sense of 
acknowledgment which steals into the heart of a vendor who 
has received an exorbitant price for goods of slight value, 
he went and put on his uniform as a guarde national, took his 
hat and sword, and returned under arms. But his wife had 
had time to reflect. As in many other hearts, reflection closed 


IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR. 


45 


the hand, which benevolence had opened. The woman had got 
frightened ; she was afraid her husband would get into some 
Scrape, so she plucked at the lappet of his coat to detain him. 
However, in obedience to an instinct of charity, the good man 
offered on the spot to escort the old lady. 

“ It looks as if the man whom the citoyenne is afraid of were 
still prowling round the shop,” said the young woman sharply. 

“ I am afraid he is,” frankly admitted the lady. 

“ Suppose it were a spy ? or perhaps there is a conspiracy ! 
Do not go — and take the box away from her.” 

These words were whispered into the pastry-cook’s ear by 
his wife ; they froze the extempore courage which had inflated 
his breast. 

“ Eh ! I’ll just go and say a word to him, and he’ll be off in 
a minute,” he exclaimed, opening the door and going out pre- 
cipitately. 

The old lady sat down again on her chair as passive as a 
child ; she looked almost silly. The honest shopman speedily 
returned ; his face, red enough to begin with, and further 
inflamed by the fire of his oven, had suddenly become livid ; 
he was so overcome with terror that his legs tottered under 
him, and his eyes looked like a drunkard’s. 

“D’you want to get our heads cut off, wretched aristocrat !” 
he cried, furious. “ Come, take to your heels, and don’t ever 
show yourself here again. Don’t expect me to furnish you with 
the elements of conspiracy ! ” 

As the pastry-cook finished these words, he tried to snatch 
back the little box, which the old lady had put into one of her 
pockets. But scarcely had" the impudent fellow’s hands touched 
her clothes, when the strange lady — preferring to face the dan- 
gers of her walk unprotected save by God, rather than lose 
what she had just purchased— regained all the agility of her 


4 & 


BALZAC. 


youth ; she sprang to the door, opened it suddenly, and 
vanished from the gaze of the pastry-cook and his wife, leaving 
them trembling and stupefied. As soon as she found herself 
outside, she set off at a quick walk ; but her strength soon 
failed her, for she heard the heavy footsteps of the spy who 
was following her so pitilessly, crunching the snow behind her. 
She was obliged to stop ; he stopped too. Whether from fear 
or lack of intelligence, she did not dare either to speak or to 
look at him. She went on, walking slowly ; then the man 
slackened his steps, always keeping at a distance from which 
he was able to watch her. The stranger seemed to be the very 
shadow of the old woman. Nine o’clock struck as this silent 
pair passed again be r ore the Church of Saint Laurent. It is 
in the nature of every heart, even the feeblest, that a feeling of 
calmness should succeed to violent agitation, for, if feeling 
is infinite, our organisation is limited. So the strange woman, 
as she experienced no harm from her supposed persecu- 
tor, was inclined to look upon him as an unknown friend 
anxious to protect her. She summed up all the circumstances 
attendant on the apparitions of the stranger with a view to 
discover plausible corroboration of this consoling theory ; she 
was bent on finding out good intentions in him rather than evil. 
Forgetting the terror with which he had inspired the pastry- 
cook just before, she passed on with a firm step through the 
higher parts of le faubourg Saint Martin. After walking for 
hnlf-an-hour, she reached a house situated at the corner formed 
by the principal street of the faubourg and the street which 
leads to la barrière de Pantin. Even now this is still one of 
the loneliest places in the whole of Paris. The north wind 
blows over les buttes de Saint Chaumont and de Belleville, 
and whistles through the houses — or rather hovels, sprinkled 
over a nearly deserted valley, divided by walls of mud and 


m THE TIME OF THE TERROR. 


47 


bones. This desolate spot seemed the natural refuge of misery 
and despair. The man, implacable in his pursuit of this poor 
creature, who was yet bold enough to traverse those silent 
streets by night, seemed impressed by the scene that rose 
before him. He stopped to consider, standing upright in an 
attitude of hesitation. A lamp, whose flickering flame could 
scarcely penetrate the mist, cast its faint light upon him. 
Fright gave the old woman eyes. She thought she could 
descry a sinister look upon the man’s features. She felt her 
fears reawakening, — then, taking advantage of a sort of uncer- 
tainty which seemed to make him linger, she glided through 
the darkness to the door of the solitary house, touched a spring, 
and was gone swift as a dream. The man stood motionless 
looking at the house. In a certain measure it might have 
served for the type of the wretched dwellings of this faubourg. 
The crazy cabin was built of ashlar smeared with a coat of 
plaster, so rotten and with such big cracks that it looked as if 
the least puff of wind would blow the whole thing down. The 
roof, covered with brown moss-grown tiles, had sunk in several 
places, and seemed on the point of falling in under the weight 
of the snow. There were three windows in each storey, the 
frames mouldering with damp and starting with the action of 
the sun ; it was evident that the cold must find its way through 
them into the rooms. The house was as isolated as an ancient 
tower that time has forgotten to destroy. The attics at the top 
of the wretched building were pierced with windows at irregular 
intervals, and from these shone a dim light, but the rest of the 
house was in complete darkness. The old woman had some 
difficulty in climbing the rough awkward staircase, up which a 
rope served for a handrail. She knocked mysteriously at the 
door of a lodging in the attic ; an old man offered her a chair ; 
she sat down in it precipitately. 


48 


BALZAC. 


“ Hide ! hide !” said she. “Though we only go out so seldom, 
they know everything we do, and spy out every step we take.” 

“What is it now?” asked another old woman who was 
sitting by the fire. 

“That man who has been prowling round the house since 
yesterday morning has been following me this evening.” 

At these words the three inhabitants of the garret looked at 
each other ; they did not try to conceal the signs of profound 
terror visible on their faces. The old man was the least 
agitated of the three, perhaps because he was in the most 
danger. A brave man, under the burden of great misfortune 
or under the yoke of persecution, has already — so to speak- 
begun his self-sacrifice; he looks upon each day of his li r e 
only as one more victory gained over fate. It was easy to 
see from the looks of the two women which were fastened 
on the old man, that he and he alone was the object of their 
intense anxiety. 

“Why should we cease to trust in God, sisters?” said he 
in a hollow voice, but with much earnestness; “we sang H.s 
praises amid the shouts of the murderers and the cries of 
the dying in the Carmelite Convent ; if He willed that I 
should be saved from the massacre, it was doubtless to pre- 
serve me for a destiny that I must endure without murmuring. 
God protects His own, He can dispose of them according 
to His will. It is you we must take thought for, not for me.” 

“No,” said one of the two old women, “what is our life 
compared with the life of a priest ?” 

“When I was once outside the Abbaye de Chelles I looked 
upon myself as dead,” exclaimed that one of the two nuns who 
had not been out. “ Look,” said the one who had just come 
in, “here are the Hosts.” “ But,” she exclaimed, “ I can hear 
some one coming up the stairs,” 


49 


TN THE TIME OF THE TERROR. 

At these words they all three listened ; the noise ceased. 

" D° not be alarmed,” said the priest, “ if some one tries 
te find you. Some one, on whose fidelity we can count, was 
to take all necessary steps for crossing the frontier, and will 
come for letters which I have written to le Duc de Langeais 
and le Marquis de Beausént, asking them to consider means 
for rescuing you from this terrible country, and the death or 
misery which await you here.” 

“But will you not follow us?” whispered the two nuns 
eagerly, with a sort of despair. 

“ My place is where there are victims,” said the priest 
simply. 

The women looked at their guest in silence, with holy 
admiration. 

“ Sœur Marthe,” said he, addressing the sister who had gone 
out for the Hosts, “ this messenger will answer Fiat volimtas 
to the word Hosanna .” 

“ There is some one on the s'.airs ! ” exclaimed the other nun, 
opening a hiding place contrived under the roof. 

This time, in the profound silence, they could easily hear the 
steps, which were covered with lumps of dried mud, creaking 
under the tread of a man. The priest squeezed with difficulty 
into a sort of wardrobe, and the nun threw some clothes over 
him. 

“ You can shut the door, Sœur Agathe,” said he in a muffled 
voice. 

He was scarcely hidden when there were three raps at the 
door. The two holy women trembled ; they took counsel by 
looks, not daring to pronounce a single word. They appeared 
to be both about sixty years old. Cut off from the world for 
forty years, they were like plants accustomed to the atmosphere 
of a greenhouse, which die if they are put out of it. They were 


BALZAC : 


5 ° 

so habituated to convent life that they could not conceive any 
other. One morning their gratings had been broken down, and 
they had shuddered at finding themselves free. It is easy to 
picture the sort of unnatural numbness that the events of the 
Revolution had produced in their innocent hearts. Incapable 
of reconciling their monastic ideas with the difficulties of life, 
they could not even understand their own situation ; they were 
like children who have been once cared for and then abandoned 
by their special providence — their mother, praying instead of 
crying. Thus in the face of the danger they foresaw at this 
moment, they remained mute and passive, knowing no other 
defence than Christian resignation. The man who had asked 
for admittance interpreted their silence as consent ; he opened 
the door at once and presented himself. The two nuns 
shuddered when they recognised him as the person who had 
been prowling round their house for some time past, collecting 
information about them. They sat motionless, looking at him 
with apprehensive curiosity, like a shy child silently staring at 
a stranger. The man was stout and of lofty stature ; there was 
nothing in his bearing, his manner, or his physiognomy sugges- 
tive of an evil nature. He imitated the stillness of the nuns, 
while his eyes slowly examined the room he had just entered. 

Two straw mats, placed on the bare boards, served as beds 
for the two nuns ; there was only one table, in the middle of 
the room ; on it stood some plates, three knives, and a round 
loaf; a small fire burnt in the grate; some pieces of wood 
piled up in a corner bore further witness to the poverty of the 
two recluses. The walls were covered with a layer of very old 
paint, showing the bad condition of the roof by the stains upon 
it, which marked with brown streams the infiltration of the 
rain. A relic, no doubt rescued from the pillage of the Abbaye 
de Chelles, was placed like an ornament upon the mantelpiece. 


IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR. 


5 * 

Three chairs, two chests, and a wretched cupboard completed 
the furniture of the room, but a door near the fireplace 
suggested that there might be a second. 

The person, who had introduced himself under such terrible 
auspices into the bosom of this family, did not take long to 
make an inventory of their cell. His features assumed an 
expression of pity as he cast a look of benevolence upon the 
two women ; he was at least as embarrassed as they. The 
strange silence which they all three kept did not last long, for 
presently the stranger began to comprehend the moral feeble- 
ness and inexperience of the two poor creatures, so he said to 
them in a voice which he tried to make gentle : “ I am not 

come to you as an enemy, citoyennes •” He stopped short, 

and then went on: “ Mes sœurs , if any misfortune should hap- 
pen to you, believe me it is not I who will have contributed to 
it. I have a favour to ask of you.” 

They still kept silence. 

“ If I intrude upon you — if I annoy you, tell me so freely — I 
will leave you ; but I hope you will understand that I am 
entirely devoted to you ; that if there is any service I could 
render you, you may command me without fear, for I 
alone perhaps— now that there is no king — am above the 
law.” 

There was a ring of truth in his words. Sœur Agathe, the 
nun who belonged to the family of Langeais, and whose man- 
ners seemed to show that she had formerly been familiar with 
brilliant society and had breathed the air of a court, hastened 
to point to a chair, as if to invite their visitor to sit down. The 
stranger showed a sort of pleasure mingled with sadness, when 
he saw this gesture ; then he waited to sit down until the two 
worthy ladies had done so themselves. 

“ You have given refuge,” he went on, “ to a venerable priest 


BALZAC. 


52 

who has not taken the oaths, who escaped miraculously from 
the massacre of the Carmelites.” 

“Hosanna/” said Sœur Agathe, interrupting him, and look- 
ing at him with nervous curiosity. 

“No, I do not think that is his name,” he replied. 

“ But, Monsieur,” said Sœur Marthe eagerly, “ we have not 
got any priest here ; and ” 

“ Then you should have been more prudent and wary,” 
answered the stranger, stretching out his hand and taking a 
breviary from the table. “ I do not think that you are likely to 
know Latin, and ” 

He did not go on ; the extraordinary emotion expressed by 
the faces of the poor nuns made him afraid he had gone too 
far ; they trembled, and their eyes filled with tears. 

“ Do not distress yourselves,” he said frankly. “ I know the 
name of your guest and your own ; three days ago I leirnt all 
about your distress, and your devotion to the venerable Abbé 
de ■” 

“ Sh ! ” said Sœur Agathe simply, putting her finger to her 
lips. 

“You see, mes sœurs, that if I had conceived the horrible 
plan of betraying you, I might have already accomplished it 
more than once.” 

When the priest heard these words, he extricated himself 
from his prison, and appeared in the middle of the room. 

“ I cannot believe, Monsieur,” said he to the strange man, 
“ that you are one of our persecutors ; I trust myself to you. 
What is it that you want of me ?” 

The holy confidence of the priest, the noble fervour expressed 
in all his features, would have disarmed a murderer. The 
mysterious person who had thus brought excitement into this 
scene of misery and resignation, sat for a moment looking at 


IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR. 53 

the group of the three before him ; then, assuming a con- 
fidential tone, he addressed the priest thus : “ Mon fiere , I 
came to entreat you to celebrate a requiem mass for the repose 
of the soul of — of a — of a consecrated person whose body 
will never rest in hallowed ground.” The priest shuddered 
involuntarily. The two nuns, not yet comprehending to whom 
the stranger referred, remained in an attitude of curiosity, 
their necks stretched out and their faces turned to the two 
speakers. The ecclesiastic scrutinised the man : genuine 
anxiety was visible in his face, and his eyes expressed ardent 
supplication. 

“ Eh bien! Come back to-night, at midnight; I shall be 
ready to celebrate the only funeral office we can offer in 
expiation of the crime of which you speak.” 

The stranger trembled, but he looked as if some feeling of 
satisfaction, at once solemn and sweet, had triumphed over 
some secret sorrow. After respectfully saluting the priest and 
the two holy women, he departed with an expression of mute 
gratitude understood by these three generous hearts. About 
two hours after this scene, he returned, knocked cautiously at 
the outer door of the attic, and was received by Mademoiselle 
de Beauséant, and led into the second room of their humble 
retreat. Here all had been prepared for the ceremony. 
Between the two pillars of the chimney-piece the nuns had 
pubhed up the old cupboard ; its antique shape was hidden 
under a magnificent altar frontal of green moire . A large 
ebony and ivory crucifix was fastened to the yellow wall, 
making the bareness only more apparent, and of necessity 
attracting the eye to itself. The sisters had managed to set up 
four little slender tapers upon this temporary altar, by fastening 
them to it with sealing-wax. The tapers cast a pale light, 
almost absorbed by the dead walls, their feeble flicker scarcely 


54 


BALZAC. 


reaching the rest of the room ; it cast its beams only upon the 
Holy Instruments, as it were, a ray of light falling from heaven 
upon the naked altar. The floor was reeking with damp. 
The roof sloped rapidly on both sides like the roof of the 
other garret, and was scored with cracks through which came 
the icy blast. Nothing could have been less stately, yet 
nothing was more solemn than this mournful ceremony. 
Profound silence, through which the least sound arising from 
la route d’Allemagne could be heard, cast a veil of 
sombre majesty over the midnight scene. Indeed the 
grandeur of the action contrasted strongly with the poverty 
of the instruments; therefrom arose a feeling of religious 
awe. On each side of the altar, regardless of the deadly 
damp, knelt the two aged nuns upon the tiling of the floor, 
and prayed together with the priest. Clad in his sacrificial 
vestments, he set out a golden chalice adorned with 
precious stones, no doubt one of the sacred vessels saved from 
the pillage of the Abbaye de Chelles. By the side of this 
ciborium, recalling by its richness the splendour of the 
monarchy, were placed two glasses, scarcely good enough 
for the lowest inn, containing the water and the wine for the 
Holy Sacrifice. For want of a missal the priest had placed 
his breviary upon the corner of the altar. A common towel 
was put ready for the washing of the innocent and bloodless 
hands. The whole- was infinite yet little; poor but noble; at 
once holy and profane. The stranger came and knelt down 
devoutly between the two nuns. The priest had tied a piece 
of crape round the chalice and the crucifix; having no other 
means of showing the intention of this requiem mass, he 
had put God Himself into mourning weeds. Suddenly the 
man noticed it ; he was seized with a memory that held such 
power over him, that the sweat stood in drops upon his wide 


IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR. 


53 


and lofty brow. The four silent actors of this scene looked 
at one another mysteriously. Then their souls, rising with 
one another in their mutual influence, communicated cne to 
another their own sensations, and were melted together in 
religious pity. It seemed as if their thought had called up 
the martyr whose remains had been devoured by quick-lime, 
and that his shadow rose before them in all its royal majesty. 
They were celebrating an obit without the body of the dead. 
Under these gaping laths and tiles, four Christians were about 
to intercede before God for a King of France, were about to 
celebrate his funeral without the coffin. Here was the purest 
of all devotion, an astonishing act of fidelity performed without 
one thought for the future. Doubtless to the eyes of God, 
it was as the glass of water which weighs in the balance as 
heavy as the greatest virtues. The whole monarchy was 
present in the prayers of a priest and two poor women; 
perhaps, too, the Revolution itself was represented in the 
man, for his face betrayed too much remorse not to cause 
the belief that he was fulfilling the vows of a boundless 
repentance. 

Instead of pronouncing the Latin words, Introibo ad altare 
Dei , etc., the Priest, by some divine inspiration, looked upon 
the three assistants — the symbol there of Christian France — 
and said to them, as though to blot out the wretchedness of 
the garret: “We are about to enter into the Sanctuary of 
God !” At these words, uttered with thrilling earnestness, the 
server and the two nuns were filled with religious awe. God 
would not have revealed Himself in greater majesty under the 
vaults of Saint Peter at Rome, than He revealed Himself then 
to the eyes of these Christians in this refuge of poverty. The 
truth is so perfect — that between Him and man every inter- 
mediary seems useless, and that He draws His greatness only 


BALZAC. 


56 

from Himself. The stranger’s devotion was real, the sentiment 
too which united the prayers of these four servants of God 
and the King was unanimous. The holy words rang through 
the silence like heavenly music. There was a moment when 
the stranger was overcome with tears; it was at the Pater 
Aoster. The priest added, in Latin, this petition, which the 
man no doubt understood : Et remitte scelus regicidis sicut 
Ludovicus eis remisit semetipse. (And forgive the regicides 
as Louis himself forgave them.) The two nuns saw two 
great tears roll down the stranger’s manly cheeks and fall 
upon the floor. The priest recited the Office for the Dead. 
The Domine salvum fac regem , intoned in a low voice, went 
to the hearts of the faithful Royalists when they remembered 
that the child-king, for whom their prayers ascen led to the 
Most High, at that moment was a captive in the hands o r his 
enemies. The stranger shivered at the thought that a new 
crime might still be committed, wherein he would ro doubt 
be forced to take part. When the funeral service was over, 
the priest made a sign to the two nuns, and they went out. 
As soon as he found himself alone with the stranger, he went 
up to him with a sad and gentle air, and said in a fatherly 
voice: “My son, if you have stained your hands in the blood 
of the martyr-king, confide in me. There is no sin which 
cannot be effaced in the eyes of God, by repentance as 
touching and sinceie as yours seems to be.” At the first 
words pronounced by the ecclesiastic, the stranger let a 
movement of involuntary terror escape him ; but his face 
recovered its calmness and he looked at the astonished priest 
with confidence. 

“Father,” said he, in a voice visibly affected, “no one is 
more innocent than I of the blood shed ■” 

“I must believe you,” said the priest. He paused while 


IN TUE 1 1ME OF TUE TERROR. 


5 7 


he once more scrutinised his penitent ; then, persisting in 
the belief that he was one of those timorous Conventionnels 
who betrayed an inviolable and consecrated head in order to 
save their own, he replied in a grave voice : “ Consider, 
my son, the fact that you have not co-operated in so great a 
crime is not sufficient to be absolved from it. Those men 
who were able to defend the King, and left their swords in 
their scabbards, will have a very heavy account to render to 
the King of Heaven. Oh ! yes,” continued the old priest, 
shaking his head impressively from right to left, — “yes, very 
heavy ! — for by remaining aloof, they became the passive 
accomplices of this terrible crime.” 

“You think,” asked the stranger in amazement, “that 
indirect participation will be punished. The soldier com- 
manded to fall into line — is he then responsible?” 

The priest hesitated. 

The stranger was glad of the embarrassment into which he 
had thrown this puritan Royalist, by placing him between 
the dogma of passive obedience — which, according to the 
Monarchists, was the essence of all military law — and the 
equally important dogma which magnifies into sanctity the 
respect due to the royal person ; in the priest’s silence he 
eagerly descried a solution to the doubts which tormented 
him. Then, in order not to leave the venerable jansenist time 
for further reflection, he said to him : “ I should blush to offer 
you any fee for the funeral service you have just celebrated 
for the repose of the King’s soul and the relief of my con- 
science ; one cannot pay for a thing of inestimable value 
except by an offering also above price. Will you deign, 
Monsieur, to accept the gift of a holy relic which I offer you. 
The day will come, perhaps, when you will understand its value.” 

As the stranger finished these words he presented the 


BALZAC. 


53 

ecclesiastic with a little box, which felt extremely light. He 
took it, as it were, unconsciously, for the man’s solemn words, 
the tone in which he spoke, and the respect with which he 
held out the box, struck him with the profoundest astonishment. 
Then they returned into the room where the two nuns were 
waiting. 

“You are in a house,” said the stranger, “belonging to 
a man — Mucius Scaevola, the plasterer who lives on the 
first floor — who is well known in the section for his patriotism ; 
but he is secretly attached to the Bourbons. He was formerly 
huntsman to Monseigneur le Prince de Conti, and owes all 
his fortune to him. As long as you do not go out of his 
house, you are safer here than in any other place in France. 
Stay here ; there are pious souls who will watch over your 
wants, and you will be able to wait, without danger, for less 
evil times. In a year, on the 21st of January” — (as he pro- 
nounced these last words he could not hide an involuntary 
shudder) — “ if you do adopt this wretched place for your refuge, 
I will return to celebrate the expiatory mass with you ” 

He did not finish his sentence. Then, saluting the silent 
inhabitants of the attic, he cast a last look on all the signs of 
their poverty, and disappeared. 

For the two innocent nuns, such an adventure assumed all 
the interest of a romance. As soon, then, as the venerable Abbé 
had informed them of the mysterious gift which the man had 
made him so solemnly, they placed the box on the table, and 
their three anxious faces, faintly lit up by the light of a tallow 
dip, betrayed an indescribable curiosity. Mademoiselle de 
Langeais opened the box, and found a very fine batiste handker- 
chief, soiled with sweat ; when they unfolded it they found that 
there were stains upon it. 

“ It is blood 1 ” said the priest. 


IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR, 


59 

“ It is marked with the royal crown 1 ” exclaimed the other 
sister. 

The two nuns dropped the precious relic in horror. For 
these two simple souls the mystery which enveloped the 
stranger became inexplicable ; as to the priest, from that day 
he did not even attempt to account for it. 

The three prisoners soon perceived, in spite of the Terror, that 
a powerful hand was stretched out over them. First, they 
received provisions and fuel; then, the two nuns discovered that 
there must be a woman co-operating with their protector, for 
linen and clothes were sent them which enabled them to go 
out without exciting remark by the aristocratic fashion of the 
dresses which they had been obliged to continue to wear ; 
finally, Mucius Scaevola gave them two cartes civiques . From 
time to time warnings necessary to the safety of the priest 
reached them in roundabout ways. These counsels came so 
opportunely that they were convinced they could only have 
been given by a person initiated into secrets of State. In spite 
of the famine which weighed over Paris, these outlaws found 
rations of white bread regularly brought to the door of their 
cabin by invisible hands ; however, they thought they had 
discovered in Mucius Scaevola the mysterious agent of these 
benefactions, which were always both suitably timed and 
ingeniously carried out. The three nobles then, who continued 
to dwell in the same attic, could not doubt that their protector 
was the person who had come to celebrate the mass of expiation 
during the night of the 22nd of January 1793 ; thus he became 
the object of their special devotion ; he was their only hope, 
they lived through him alone. They had added to their 
prayers special prayers for him ; night and morning the pious 
creatures offered their vows for his happiness, prosperity, and 
safety ; they besought God to keep far from him every snare, to 


6o 


BALZAC . 


deliver him from his enemies and grant him a long and peaceful 
life. To their gratitude, renewed so to speak every day, was 
necessarily allied a feeling of curiosity which grew each day 
more intense. The circumstances that had attended the 
stranger’s apparition were the subject of their conversations ; 
they formed a thousand conjectures concerning him ; even the 
mere distraction of thought which he caused was a fresh 
source of advantage to them. They promised themselves to 
make sure of not letting him escape from their gratitude the 
evening when he would come back according to his promise, to 
celebrate the sad anniversary of the death of Louis XVI. That 
night, so impatiently awaited, arrived at last. At midnight, the 
sound of the stranger’s heavy footsteps was heard upon the old 
wooden staircase ; the room had been prepared to receive him, 
the altar was vested. This time the sisters opened the door 
to greet him, and both hastened to the stairs with a light. 
Mademoiselle de Langeais even went a few steps down in order 
to see their benefactor the sooner. 

“ Come,” she said kindly, in a Voice broken by emotion — 

“ come, we were expecting you.” 

The man raised his head, cast a sombre look at the nun, and 
made no answer. She felt as if a mantle of ice had fallen upon 
her ; she was silent. Gratitude and curiosity expired in their 
hearts at the sight of him. Perhaps he seemed to them, whose 
hearts were excited by sentiment and disposed to expand into 
friendship, more chilling, taciturn, and terrible than he really ^ 
was. The three poor prisoners comprehended that he desired 
to remain a stranger to them, and resigned themselves. The 
priest fancied he saw a smile upon the man’s lips at the moment 
when he perceived the preparation that they had made for his 
reception ; but he immediately repressed it. He heard mass 
and prayed, then he departed, after having replied with a few 


IN THE TIME OF THE TERROR. 


61 

polite words of refusal to Mademoiselle de Langeais’s 
invitation to partake of the little collation which they had 
prepared. 

After the 9th of thermidor , the nuns and the Abbé de 
Marolles were able to walk through Paris without the least 
risk. The first expedition which the Abbé made was to a per- 
fumery shop, at the sign of La Reine des fleurs , kept by a 
citoyen and citoyenne Ragon, late perfumers to the Court, who 
remained faithful to the royal family, and whom the Vendéans 
made use of to correspond with the Princes and the Royalist 
Committee in Paris. The Abbé, dressed as the times required, 
was just at the door-step of this shop, — which was situated 
between Saint Roch and la rue des Trondeurs, — when a crowd 
that filled la rue Saint Honoré prevented his going out. 

“What’s this ?” said he to Madame Ragon. 

“ It is nothing,” she replied ; “ only the tumbril and the 
executioner going to la Place Louis XV. Ah ! we saw it 
often enough last year ; but to-day, just four days after the 
anniversary of the Twenty-first of January, one can look at the 
ghastly procession without any pain.” 

“Why,” said the Abbé, “ what you say is not Christian.” 

“ Ah ! but it is the execution of Robespierre’s accomplices. 
They defended themselves as long as they could, but now it’s 
their turn — over there , where they have sent so many innocent 
men.” 

The crowd filled la rue Saint Honoré, and passed by like a 
flood. The Abbé de Marolles, yielding to an impulse of 
curiosity, looked, and saw above the heads of the crowd, 
standing erect on the tumbril, the man who had heard his 
Mass three days before. 

“ Who is it ?” said he ; “ the man ■” 

“It’s the executioner,” answered Monsieur Ragon, calling 


62 


BALZAC. 


the exécuteur des hautes œuvres by his title under the 
monarchy. 

“ Mon ami \ mon a?ni / ” cried Madame Ragon ; “Monsieur 
l’Abbé is dying ! ” and the old lady got a flask of vinegar to 
bring the priest to his senses, for he had fainted. “ No doubt 
what he gave me,” said he, “ was the handkerchief with which 
the King wiped his face when he was going to his martyrdom. 
— Poor man ! The axe had a heart in its steel when none was 
found in all France ! ” 

The perfumers thought the poor priest was delirious. 


W W. 


MADAME DE DEV’S LAST RECEPTION. 


“ Sometimes they saw that by some phenomenon of Vision or 
Locomotion he could abolish Space in both its moods — Time and 
Distance — whereof the one is intellectual and the other physical.” — 
Louis Lambart. 

One evening in the month of November 1793, principal 
inhabitants of Carentan were collected in the salon of Madame 
de Dey, who held an Assembly every evening. Certain 
circumstances which would have attracted no notice in a 
large town, but were such as to mightily interest a small 
one, imparted a peculiar importance to this customary 
gathering. Two days before, Madame de Dey had closed 
her doors to her visitors on the ground of indisposition, and 
had also announced that she would be unable to receive them 
the following evening. At an ordinary time these two events 
would have produced the same effect at Carentan as a relâche 
at all the theatres produces in Paris ; on these days, existence 
seems in a sense incomplete. But in 1793, the action of 
Madame de Dey was one which might lead to the most 
disastrous consequences. At that time, a step involving a 
noble in the least risk was nearly always a matter of life 
and death. In order to understand properly the keen curiosity 
and petty craftiness which on that evening animated the faces 


6 4 


BALZAC. 


of all these respectable Normans ; and still more, in order 
to share the secret perplexities of Madame de Dey, it is 
necessary to explain the part she played at Carentan. As 
the critical position in which she was situated at this time 
was no doubt the position of many during the Revolution, 
the sympathies of not a few of my readers will add their 
own colour to this narrative. 

Madame de Dey was the widow of a Lieutenant-General 
decorated with several orders. At the beginning of the Emi- 
gration she had left the Court, and as she owned considerable 
property in the neighbourhood of Carentan, she had taken 
refuge there, in the hope that the influence of the Terror would 
make itself but little felt in those parts. This supposition, 
founded on an exact knowledge of the country, proved correct, 
for the ravages of the Revolution in Lower Normandy were 
slight. Although, formerly, when she came to visit her property 
she had only associated with the local noblesse , now, out of 
policy, she opened her doors to the principal townspeople and 
the new authorities of Carentan, exerting herself to flatter them 
by the compliment of her acquaintance, and at the same time to 
avoid awakening their hatred or their jealousy. Kind and 
courteous, gifted with an indescribable sweetness of manner, 
she knew how to please without recourse to cringing or 
entreaty, and had thus succeeded in winning general esteem, 
j This was due to her exquisite tact, which by its sage promptings 
enabled her to steer a difficult course and satisfy the exigencies 
of a mixed society ; she neither humiliated the tetchy self- 
conceit of the parvenus nor shocked the sensibilities of her old 
friends. 

At the age of about thirty-eight, she still preserved — not that 
fresh buxom beauty which distinguishes the girls of Lower 
Normandy— but a slender, so to speak, aristocratic type. Her 


MADAME DE DEY' S LAST RECEPTION, 5 $ 

features were delicately chiselled and her figure pliant and 
graceful ; when she spoke, her pale face seemed to light up with 
fresh life. Her large dark eyes were full of kindly courtesy, but 
an expression of religious calm within them seemed to show 
that the principle of her existence lay no longer in herself. She 
had been married at an early age to an old and jealous soldier, 
and the falseness of her position in the midst of a dissolute 
court, had no doubt done much to spread a veil of grave 
melancholy over a face which must once have beamed with all 
the charm and vivacity of Love. Obliged to repress unceasingly 
the instinctive impulses and emotions of woman, at a time when 
she still feels rather than reflects, with her, passion had remained 
virgin in the depth of her heart. Thus her chief attraction was 
derived from this inward youthfulness, which betrayed itself at 
ceitain moments in her countenance, and gave her ideas an 
innocent expression of desire. Her appearance commanded 
respect, but in her manner and her voice, impulses towards an 
unknown future such as spring in the heart of a young girl, 
were continually showing themselves. The least susceptible 
men soon found themselves in love with her, and yet were 
impressed with a sort of fear of her, inspired by her courtly 
bearing. Her soul, great by nature but rendered strong by 
cruel struggles, seemed to be raised too high for common 
humanity, and of this men appeared to be conscious. To such 
a soul, a lofty passion is a necessity. Thus all Madame de 
Dey’s affections were concentrated in one single sentiment — the 
sentiment of Maternity. The happiness and pleasures of which 
she had been deprived as a wife she found again in the intense 
love she bore her son. She loved him, not only with the pure 
and deep devotion of a mother, but with the coquetry of a 
mistress and the jealousy of a wife. She was miserable when 

he was far from her, anxious when he had gone out ; she could 

844 


66 


BALZAC, 


never see enough of. him; she lived only in him and for 
him. To give an idea of the strength of this sentiment 
in Madame de Dey, it will be enough to add that this 
son, besides being her only child, was the last relation left 
her, the only creature on whom she could fasten the hopes 
and fears and joys of her life. The late Count was the last of 4 
his family, and the Countess the sole heiress of hers, so that 
every worldly calculation and interest combined with the 
noblest needs of the soul to intensify in her heart a sentiment 
already so strong in the heart of woman. It was only by 
infinite care that she had succeeded in rearing her son, and this 
had endeared him still more to her. The doctor had pro- 
nounced twenty times over that she must lose him, but she was 
confident in her own hopes and presentiments. So in spite of 
the decrees of the Faculty, she had the inexpressible joy of 
seeing him pass safely through the perils of infancy, and then of 
watching with wonder the continued improvement of his health. 

Thanks to her constant care, her son had grown into a young 
man of so much promise that at the age of twenty he was 
looked upon as one of the most accomplished gentlemen at the 
Court of Versailles. Above all, happy in a crown unattained 
by the efforts of every mother, she was adored by her son ; they 
understood one another heart to heart in fraternal sympathy. 

If they had not been already bound together by the bonds of 
nature, they would have instinctively felt for each other that 
mutual friendship between men which is so rarely met with in life. 

The young Count had been appointed sub-lieutenant at the 
age of eighteen, and in obedience to the code of honour of the 
day had followed the princes in their Emigration. 

Thus it was impossible for Madame de Dey, being noble, 
rich, and the mother of an Emigrant, to hide from herself the 
dangers of her cruel situation. With no other aim than to save 


MADAME DE DE Y' S LAST RECEPTION. 67 

her large fortune for her son, she had given up the happiness 
of accompanying him ; but when she . read at Carentan the 
stringent laws under which the Republic was confiscating every 
day the property of Emigrants, she exulted in her act of courage, 
for was she not preserving her son’s wealth at the risk of her 
own life ? Later on, when she heard of the terrible executions 
decreed by the Convention, she slept in peace, knowing that 
her only treasure was in safety, far from danger and the scaffold. 
She congratulated herself in the belief that she had taken the 
best means of preserving both her treasures at once. By 
consecrating to this secret thought the concessions which those 
unhappy times demanded, she neither compromised her 
womanly dignity nor her aristocratic convictions, but hid her 
sorrows under a cold veil of mystery. 

She had grasped all the difficulties which awaited her at 
Carentan. To come there and fill the first place was in itself a 
daily tempting of the scaffold. But supported by her motherly 
courage, she was enabled to win the affection of the poor by 
consoling the misery of all without distinction, and to make 
herself indispensable to the rich by ministering to their 
pleasures. 

She entertained at her house the Procureur of the Commune, 
the Mayor, the President of the district, the Public Prosecutor, 
and even the judges of the Revolutionary Court. Of these 
personages the first four were unmarried, and paid their 
addresses to her. Each of them hoped she would marry him, 
either from fear of the harm that it was in their power to do 
her, or for the sake of the protection which they had to offer her. 
The Public Prosecutor, formerly an attorney at Caen, employed 
to manage the Countess’s business, adopted an artifice which 
was most dangerous for her. He tried a generous and devoted 
line of conduct, in the hope of inspiring her with affection. In 


68 


BALZAC. 


this way he was the most formidable of all her suitors, and as 
she had formerly been a client of his, he alone knew intimately 
the condition and extent of her fortune. His passion was 
therefore reinforced by all the desires of avarice, and further 
supported by immense power — the power of life and death over 
the whole district. This man, who was still young, proceeded 
with so fine a show of generosity that Madame de Dey had not 
as yet been able to form a true estimate of him. But despite 
the danger of a trial of craft with Normans, she made use of all 
the inventive wit and duplicity bestowed by nature on women, 
to play off these rivals one against the other. By gaining time, 
she hoped to reach the end of her difficulties, safe and sound. 
At this period the royalists of the interior went on flattering 
themselves from day to day that on the morrow they would see 
the end of the Republic ; it was this persuasion which brought 
many of them to ruin. 

In spite of these difficulties, by the exercise of considerable 
address, the Countess had maintained her independence up to 
the day on which she had determined, with unaccountable 
imprudence, to close her doors to her guests. She inspired 
such a real and deep interest, that the people who had come to 
her house that evening were seriously perturbed when they 
heard it was impossible for her to receive them. Then, with 
that barefaced curiosity which is ingrained in provincial 
manners, they immediately began to make inquiries as to what 
trouble, or annoyance, or illness, she suffered from. To these 
questions an old housekeeper named Brigitte answered that 
her mistress kept her room and would see no one, not even the 
members of her household. 

The semi-claustral life led by the inhabitants of a small town 
forms a habit of analysing and explaining the actions of others, 
so germane to them as to become invincible. So after having 


MADAME DE DE Y 1 S LAST RE CE T TI O N. 69 

pitied Madame de Dey, without really knowing whether she 
was happy or unhappy, each one set himself to discover the 
cause of her sudden retirement. 

“ If she were ill,” said the first inquisitor, “ she would have 
sent for advice ; but the doctor has been at my house the whole 
day playing chess. He was joking with me and saying that 
there is only one disease nowadays . . and that’s incurable.” 

This jest was hazarded with caution. 

Men and women, old and young, set themselves to scour the 
vast field of conjecture ; each one thought he spied a secret, 
and this secret occupied all their imaginations. 

By the next day their suspicions had grown more venomous. 
As life in a small town is balanced up to date, the women 
learned, the first thing in the morning, that Brigitte had made 
larger purchases at the market than usual. This was an indis- 
putable fact. Brigitte bad been seen very early in the Place , 
and — marvellous to relate ! — she had bought the only hare 
there was to be got. Now the whole town knew that Madame 
de Dey did not care for game, so this hare became the object 
of endless speculation. Then, as the old men were taking their 
usual stroll they observed a sort of concentrated activity in the 
Countess’s house, betrayed by the very precautions that the 
servants took to conceal it. The valet was beating a carpet in 
the garden ; the evening before no one would have noticed it, 
but as every one was constructing a lomance of his own, this 
carpet served them for a foundation. Each person had a 
different tale. 

The second day, the principal personages of Carentan, 
hearing that Madame de Dey announced that she was unwell, 
met for the evening at the house of the Mayor’s brother, a 
retired merchant. He was a married man, honourable, and 
generally respected, the Countess herself having a great regard 


7o 


BALZAC . 


for him. On this occasion all the aspirants to the rich widow’s 
hand had a more or less probable story to tell, while each of 
them pondered how to turn to his own profit the secret which 
cbliged her to compromise herself in the way she had. The 
Tublic Prosecutor imagined all the details of a drama in which 
her son was to be brought to the Countess by night. The 
Mayor believed that a priest who had refused the oaths had 
come from La Vendée, and sought refuge. The President of 
the district was convinced it was a Chouan or Vendéan leader, 
hotly pursued. Others inclined to a noble escaped from the 
prisons in Paris. In short, everybody suspected that the 
Countess had been guilty of one of .those acts of generosity, 
denominated by the laws of that time “crimes,” and such as 
might bring her to the scaffold. However, the Public Prose- 
cutor whispered that they must be silent, and try to save the 
unfortunate lady from the abyss into which she was hurrying. 

“If you publish this affair abroad,” he added, “ I shall be 

obliged to interfere, search her house, and then !” He 

said no more, but every one understood his reticence. 

The Countess’s true friends were so much alarmed for her, 
that, on the morning of the third day, the Procureur Syndic of 
the Commune got his wife to write her a note, entreating her 
to hold her reception that evening as usual. The old merchant, 
bolder still, presented himself during the morning at Madame 
de Dey’s house. Confident in his desire to serve her, he 
insisted on being shown in, when to his utter amazement he 
caught sight of her in the garden, engaged in cutting the last 
flowers in her borders to fill her vases. 

“ There’s no doubt she has given refuge to her lover,” said 
the old man, struck with pity for this charming woman. The 
strange expression of her face confirmed his suspicions. 
Deeply moved by a devotion natural in woman but always 


MADAME DE DE T S LAST RECEPTION. 71 

touching to us, — because every man is flattered by the sacri- 
fices a woman makes for one of them, — the merchant informed 
the Countess of the reports which were going about the town, 
and of the danger she was in. — “For,” he concluded, “if 
certain of our functionaries would not be disinclined to pardon 
your heroism, if a priest were the object, no one will have any 
pity on you, if it is discovered that you are sacrificing yourself 
to the dictates of the heart.” 

At these words Madame de Dey looked at him in such a 
strange, wild way, that, old man as he was, he could not help 
shuddering. 

“ Come,” said she, taking him by the hand and leading him 
into her own room. After making sure that they were alone, 
she drew from her bosom a soiled and crumpled letter. “ Read 
it,” she cried, pronouncing the words with a violent effort. 

She fell back into her easy-chair completely overcome. 
Whilst the old merchant was looking for his spectacles and 
wiping them clean, she raised her eyes to his face, and for the 
first time gazed at him curiously; then she said sweetly, and 
in a changed voice : “ I can trust you.” 

“Am I not going to take a share in your crime?” answered 
the worthy man simply. 

She shuddered. For the first time in that little town her 
soul found sympathy in the soul of another. The old merchant 
understood immediately both the dejection and the joy of the 
Countess. Her son had taken part in the expedition of 
Granville, he had written to his mother from the depth of 
his prison to give her one sad, sweet hope. Confident in his 
plan of escape, he named three days within which he would 
present himself at her house in disguise. The fatal letter 
contained heartrending adieux in case he should not be at 
Carentan by the evening of the third day. He also entreated 


72 


BALZAC . 


his mother to remit a considerable sum of money to the 
messenger who had undertaken to carry this missive to her, 
through innumerable dangers. 

The paper quivered in the old man’s hands. 

“And this is the third day,” cried Madame de Dey. Then 
she rose hastily, took the letter, and began to walk up and 
down the room. 

“You have not been altogether prudent,” said the merchant. 
“Why did you have provisions got in?” 

“ But he may arrive dying with hunger, worn out with 
fatigue, and ■” She could not go on. 

“ I am certain of my brother,” answered the old man ; “ I 
will go and get him on your side.” 

The merchant summoned up all the keenness which he 
had formerly employed in his commercial affairs. He gave 
the Countess the most prudent and sagacious directions, and 
after having agreed together as to everything they both were 
to say and do, the old man invented a plausible pretext for 
visiting all the principal houses of Carentan. He announced 
in each that he had just seen Madame de Dey, and that she 
would hold her reception that evening, in spite of her indis- 
position. In the cross-examination which each family subjected 
him to on the nature of the Countess’s malady, his keenness 
was a match for the shrewd Normans. He managed to start 
on the wrong track almost every one who busied themselves 
with this mysterious affair. His first visit did wonders ; it 
was to an old lady who suffered from gout. To her he related 
that Madame de Dey had almost died from an attack of gout 
on the stomach, and went on to say that the famous Tronchin 
having formerly prescribed, on a similar occasion, the sk n 
of a hare flayed alive to be laid on the chest, and for the 
patient to lie in bed without stirring; the Countess, who \, s 


MADAME DE DEY' S LAST RECEPTION, 73 

in imminent danger two days before, after having scrupulously 
carried out Tronchin’s extraordinary prescription, now felt 
sufficiently convalescent to receive any one who liked to visit 
her that evening. This tale had an enormous success, and 
the doctor of Carentan, himself a royalist in petto , increased 
its effect by the earnestness with which he discussed the 
remedy. However, suspicion had taken too deep root in the 
minds of certain obstinate or philosophic persons to be entirely 
dissipated ; so that evening the guests of Madame de Dey 
were eager to arrive at her house at an early hour, some to 
spy into her face, some out of friendship, and most from 
astonishment at her marvellous cure. They found the Countess 
sitting in her salon at the corner of the large chimney-piece. 

Her room was almost as severe as the salons of Carentan, 
for, to avoid wounding her narrow-minded guests, she had 
denied herself the pleasures of luxury to which she had been 
accustomed before, and had made no changes in her house. 
The floor of the reception-room was not even polished ; she let 
the old dingy stuff's still hang upon the walls, still kept the 
country furniture, burnt tallow candles, and in fact followed the 
fashions of Carentan. She had adopted provincial life without 
shrinking from its cruellest pettinesses or its most disagreeable 
privations. But knowing that her guests would pardon her any 
expenditure conducive to their own comfort, she neglected 
nothing which could afford them personal enjoyment : at her 
house they were always sure of an excellent dinner. She even 
went so far as to feign avarice to please their calculating minds, 
and led them on to disapprove of certain details as concessions 
to luxury, in order to show that she could yield with grace. 

Towards seven o’clock in the evening the upper middle-class 
society of Carentan was assembled at her house, and formed a 
large circle round her hearth. The mistress of the house, 


74 


BALZAC. 


supported in her trouble by the old merchant’s compassionate 
glances, submitted with unheard-of courage to the minute ques- 
tionings and stupid, frivolous talk of her guests. But at every 
rap of the knocker, and whenever a footstep sounded in the street, 
she could scarcely control her emotion. She raised discussions 
affecting the prosperity of the district and such burning questions 
as the quality of ciders, and was so well seconded by her confi- 
dant that the company almost forgot to spy upon her, the expres- 
sion of her face was so natural and her assurance so imperturb- 
able. However, the Public Prosecutor and one of the Judges of 
the Revolutionary Tribunal kept silence, watching attentively 
the least movement of her features, and listening, in spite of the 
noise, to every sound in the house. Every now and then they 
would ask some question calculated to embarrass her, but 
these she answered with admirable presence of mind. She 
proved how great a mother’s courage can be. 

After having arranged the card-tables and settled every one 
to boston , or never si, or whist , Madame de Dey still remained 
talking with the greatest nonchalance to some young people ; 
she played her part like a consummate actress. Presently she 
led them on to ask for loto , pretended to be the only person 
who knew where it was, and left the room. 

“ Ma pauvre Brigitte ” she cried, “ I feel almost suffocated.” 

Her eyes were brilliant with fever and grief and impatience 
as she dried the tears which started quickly from them. “ He 
is not coming,” she said, looking into the bedroom into which 
she had come. “ Here I can breathe and live. — But in a few 
minutes more he will be here ! for he is alive, I am certain he 
is alive. My heart tells me so. Do you not hear something, 
Brigitte ? Oh ! I would give the rest of my life to know 
whether he is in prison or walking across the country. I 
would give anything not to think.” 


MADAME DE DE Y' S LAST RECEPTION. 75 

She looked round once again to see if everything was in 
order in the room. A good fire burned brightly in the grate, 
the shutters were shut close, the furniture was polished until it 
shone again ; the very way in which the bed was made was 
enough to prove that the Countess herself as well as Brigitte 
had been busy about the smallest details. Her hopes too were 
manifest in all the delicate care that had evidently been spent 
upon this room. The scent of the flowers she had placed there 
seemed to shed forth, mingled with their own perfume, the 
gracious sweetness and the chastest caresses of love. Only a 
mother could thus have anticipated a soldier’s wants, and pre- 
pared him such complete satisfaction of them. A dainty meal, 
choice wines, slippers, clean linen — in short, everything neces- 
sary or agreeable to a weary traveller, were collected together, 
that he might want for nothing, and that the delights of home 
might remind him of a mother’s love. 

The Countess went and placed a seat at the table as if to 
realise her prayers and increase the strength of her illusions. 
As she did so she cried in a heartrending voice, “ Brigitte ! ” 

“ Ah, Madame, he will come ; he cannot be far off. I am 
certain that he is alive and on the way,” replied Brigitte. “ I 
put a key in the Bible, and rested it on my fingers, while 
Cottin read the Gospel of St. John— and, Madame, the key did 
not turn.” 

“ Is that a sure sign ?” asked the Countess. 

“ Oh, Madame, it’s well known ; I would stake my soul 
that he is still alive. God would never deceive us like 
that.” 

“ In spite of the danger he will be in here ; still, I long to see 
him.” 

“Poor Monsieur Auguste,” cried Brigitte, “no doubt he is 
on the roads, on foot’ 


76 BALZAC 

“Hark, that is eight striking,” exclaimed the Countess in 
terror. 

She was afraid that she had stayed too long in the room, but 
there she could believe that her son still lived when she saw 
everything bear witness to his life. She went downstairs, but 
before going into the salon she waited a moment under the 
colonnade of the staircase, and listened for some sound to 
awaken the silent echoes of the town. She smiled at Brigitte’s 
husband, who kept watch like a sentinel ; his eyes seemed 
stupefied with straining to catch the murmurs of the Place and 
the first sounds of the night. Everywhere and in everything 
she saw her son. 

A moment afterwards she had returned to her guests, affecting 
an air of gaiety, and sat down to play at loto with some girls. 
But every now and then she complained of feeling unwell, and 
went to recline in her easy-chair by the fireplace. 

Such was the situation, material and mental, in the house of 
Madame de Dey. Meanwhile, on the high road from Paris to 
Cherbourg, a young man clad in a brown carmagnole , a costume 
in vogue at this period, directed his steps towards Carentan. 

In the commencement of the Réquisitions there was little or 
no discipline. The exigencies of the moment scarcely allowed 
the Republic to equip its soldiers fully at once, so that it was 
nothing unusual to see the roads full of réquisilionnaires still 
wearing their civil clothes. These young men arrived at the 
halting-places before their battalions or remained there behind 
them, for the progress of each man depended on his personal 
capability of enduring the fatigues of a long journey. ’The 
traveller in question found himself considerably in advance of 
a battalion of réquisitionnâmes which was on its way to 
Cherbourg, and which the Mayor of Carentan was waiting for 
from hour to hour, to billet on the inhabitants. The young man 


MADAME DE DEY' S LAST RECEPTION, 77 

walked with heavy steps, but still he did not falter, and his gait 
seemed to show that he had long been accustomed to the 
severities of military life. Though the moon shed her light 
upon the pastures around Carentan, he had noticed a thick 
white bank of clouds ready to cover the whole country with 
snow. The fear of being caught in a hurricane no doubt 
hastened his steps, for he was walking at a pace little suited to 
his weariness. He carried an almost empty knapsack on his 
back and in his hand a box-wood stick, cut from one of the high 
thick hedges which this shrub forms round most of the estates 
of Lower Normandy. 

The towers of Carentan, thrown into fantastic relief by the 
moonlight, had only just come into sight, when this solitary 
traveller entered the town. His footfall awakened the echoes 
of the silent streets. He did not meet a creature, so he was 
obliged to inquire for the house of the Mayor from a weaver 
who was still at his work. The Mayor lived only a short 
distance off, and the réquisiiionnaire soon found himself under 
shelter in the porch of his house. Here he applied for a billet 
order and sat down on a stone seat to wait. However, the 
Mayor sent for him, so he was obliged to appear before him 
and become the object of a scrupulous examination. The 
réquisitionnaire was a foot soldier, a young man of fine bearing, 
apparently belonging to a family of distinction. His manners 
had the air of gentle birth, and his face expressed all the 
intelligence due to a good education. 

“What is your name?” asked the Mayor, casting a knowing 
glance at him. 

“Julien Jussieu,” replied the réquisitionnaire. 

The magistrate let an incredulous smile escape him. “And 
you come ? ” 

“From Paris.” 


BALZAC : 


*8 

“Your comrades must be some distance off,” replied the 
Norman in a bantering tone. 

“ I am three leagues in front of the battalion.” 

“No doubt some sentiment draws you to Carentan, citoyen 
rêquisitionnaire /” said the Mayor with a shrewd look. “ It is 
all right,” he continued. The young man was about to speak, 
but he motioned him to be silent and went on, “ You can go, 
Citoyen Jussieu /” 

There was a tinge of irony discernible in his accent, as he 
pronounced these two last words and held out to him a billet 
order which directed him to the house of Madame de Dey. 
The young man read the address with an air of curiosity. 

“ He knows well enough that he hasn’t got far to go ; when 
he’s once outside he won’t be long crossing the Place!” ex- 
claimed the Mayor, talking to himself as the young man went 
out. “ He’s a fine bold fellow ; God help him ! He’s got an 
answer ready to everything. Ay, but if it had bee’' °r*” -me 
else but me, and they had demanded to see his papers, — it 
would have been all up with him.” 

At this moment the clocks of Carentan struck half-past nine. 
In the ante-chamber at Madame de Dey’s the lanterns were 
lighted, the servants were helping their masters and mistresses 
to put on their clogs and houppelandes and mantles, the card 
players had settled their accounts, and tl ey were all leaving 
together, according to the established custom in little 
towns. 

When they had exhausted all the formularies of adieu and 
were separating in the Place y each in the direction of his own 
home, one of the ladies, observing that that important personage 
was not with them, remarked, “It appears that the Prosecutor 
intends to remain.” 

As a matter of fact, the Countess was at that moment alone 


MADAME DE DEY' S LAST RECEPTION. 79 

with that terrible magistrate , she waited, trembling, till it 
should please him to depart. 

After a long silence, which inspired her with a feeling of 
terror, he said at last, “ Citoyenne , I am here to carry out the 
laws of the Republic.” 

Madame de Dey shuddered. 

“ Hast thou nothing to reveal to me ?” he asked. 

“ Nothing,” she replied, in astonishment. 

“Ah, Madame,” cried the Prosecutor, sitting down beside 
her and changing his tone, “at this moment one word could 
send us — you and me — to the scaffold. I have watched your 
character, your mind, your manners too closely to share in the 
mystification by which you have succeeded in misleading your 
guests this evening. You are expecting your son, I have not 
the least doubt of it.” 

The Countess made an involuntary gesture of denial ; but 
she had grown pale, the muscles of her face had contracted 
under the necessity of displaying a coolness she did not feel ; 
the pitiless eye of the Prosecutor had not lost one of these 
movements. 

“Well! receive him,” replied this magistrate of the revolu- 
tion, “ but do not let him remain under your roof after seven 
o’clock in the morning. To-morrow at daybreak I shall come 
to your house armed with a denunciation which I shall get 
drawn up.” 

She looked at him with a bewildered, numbed look that 
might have drawn pity from a tiger. 

“ I shall demonstrate,” he continued sweetly, “ the falsity 
of this denunciation by a careful search. You will then be 
screened by the nature of my report from all ulterior suspicions. 
1 shall speak of your patriotic gifts, your civism t and we shall 
be saved.” 


So 


BALZAC . 


Madame de Dey suspected a snare ; she remained motion- 
less, her tongue was frozen and her face on fire. The sound of 
the knocker echoed through the house. 

“ Ah,” cried the mother as she fell in terror upon her knees, 
“ save him ! save him ! * 

The Public Prosecutor cast a passionate glance at her. 

“ Yes, let us save him,” he replied, “even at the cost of our 
own lives.” He raised her politely. 

“ I am lost,” she cried. 

“ Ah, Madame ! ” he answered, with an oratorical gesture, “ I 
would not owe you to anything — but to yourself alone.” 

“ Madame, he’s ” cried Brigitte, thinking her mistress was 

alone. 

At the sight of the Public Prosecutor, the old servant, who 
had burst in, beaming with joy, grew pale and motionless. 

“Who is it, Brigitte?” asked the magistrate, with an air of 
gentle intelligence. 

“A réquisitionnaire sent us from the Mayor’s to lodge,” 
answered the servant, showing him the billet order. The 
Prosecutor read the paper. “True,” said he; “a battalion is 
coming to us to-night.” He went out. 

At that moment the Countess had too much need to believe 
in the sincerity of her former attorney for the least doifbt of it 
to cross her mind ! 

Though she had scarcely the power to stand, she ascended 
the staircase precipitately, opened the door of the room, saw 
her son, and threw herself half dead into his arms. “My 
child, my child,” she sobbed, almost beside herself, as she 
covered him with kisses. 

“ Madame 1 ” said a stranger’s voice. 

“ Ah, it is not he 1 ” she cried, recoiling in horror. She stood 
upright before the réquisitionnaire and gazed at him with 


MADAME DE DE Y’ S LAST RECEPTION. 81 


haggard eyes. “ My good God, how like he is ! ” said Brigitte. 
There was a moment’s silence ; even the stranger shuddered at 
the sight of Madame de Dey. 

The first blow had almost killed her, and now she felt the 
full extent of her grief. She leant for support on Brigitte’s 
husband. “ Ah, Monsieur,” she said, “ I could not bear to see 
you any longer. Allow me to leave you for my servants to 
entertain.” 

She went down to her own room, half carried by Brigitte 
and her old manservant. “ What ! Madame,” cried the house- 
keeper, as she led her mistress to a chair ; “ is that man going 
to sleep in Monsieur Auguste’s bed, and wear Monsieur 
Auguste’s slippers, and eat the pasty that I made for Monsieur 
Auguste ? If I was to be guillotined for it, I ” 

“ Brigitte 1” cried Madame de Dey. 

Brigitte was mute. 

“ Hold thy tongue, chatterbox,” said her husband in a low 
voice. “ Dost want to kill Madame ?” 

At this moment the Rcquisitionnaij'e made a noise in his room 
as he sat down to the table. 

“ I cannot stay here,” cried Madame de Dey. “ I will go 
into the conservatory ; I shall be able to hear better there what 
goes on outside during the night.” 

She was still tossed between the fear of having lost her son 
and the hope of seeing him come back to her. 

The silence of the night was horrible. The arrival of the 
battalion of Rèquisitionnaires in the town, when each man 
sought his lodging, was a terrible moment for the Countess. 
Her hopes were cheated at every footfall, at every sound ; 
presently nature resumed her awful calm. 

Towards morning the Countess was obliged to return to her 


own room. 


845 


82 


BALZAC. 


Brigitte, who was watching her mistress’s movements, not 
seeing her come out, went into the room and found the Countess 
dead. 

“ She must have heard that Rcquisilionnaire” cried Brigitte. 
“ As soon as he has finished dressing, there he is, marching up 
and down Monsieur Auguste’s bedroom, as if he were in a 
stable, singing their damned Marseillaise / It was enough to 
kill her.” 

The death of the Countess was due to a deeper sentiment, 
and doubtless caused by some terrible vision. At the exact 
hour when Madame de Dey died at Carentan, her son was shot 
in le Morbihan. 

We may add this tragic event to all the evidence of sympathies 
ignoring the laws of space, which has been collected through 
the learning and curiosity of certain recluses. These docu- 
ments will some day serve as the groundwork whereon to base 
a new science — a science which has hitherto lacked its man of 
genius. 


W. W. 


A PASSION IN THE DESERT. 


“ The whole show is dreadful,” she cried, coming out of the 
menagerie of M. Martin. She had just been looking at that 
daring speculator “ working with his hyena,” — to speak in the 
style of the programme. 

“ By what means,” she continued, “ can he have tamed 
these animals to such a point as to be certain of their affection 
for ” 

“ What seems to you a problem,” said I, interrupting, “ is 
really quite natural.” 

“ Oh 1 ” she cried, letting an incredulous smile wander over 
her lips. 

“ You think that beasts are wholly without passions?” I asked 
her. “ Quite the reverse ; we can communicate to them all 
the vices arising in our own state of civilisation.” 

She looked at me with an air of astonishment. 

“Nevertheless,” I continued, “ the first time I saw M. Martin, 
I admit, like you, I did give vent to an exclamation of surprise. 
I found myself next to an old soldier with the right leg 
amputated, who had come in with me. His face had struck 
me. He had one of those intrepid heads, stamped with 
the seal of warfare, and on which the battles of Napoleon 
are written. Besides, he had that frank good-humoured 
expression which always impresses me favourably. He was 


8 4 


BALZAC . 


without doubt one of those troopers who are surprised 
at nothing, who find matter for laughter in the contortions 
of a dying comrade, who bury or plunder him quite light- 
heartedly, who stand intrepidly in the way of bullets ; — in 
fact, one of those men who waste no time in deliberation, and 
would not hesitate to make friends with the devil himself. 
After looking very attentively at the proprietor of the 
menagerie getting out of his box, my companion pursed up his 
lips with an air of mockery and contempt, with that peculiar 
and expressive twist which superior people assume to show 
they are not taken in. Then, when I was expatiating on the 
courage of M. Martin, he smiled, shook his head knowingly, 
and said, ‘ Well known.’ ” 

“ How ‘well known’ ?” I said. “ If you would only explain 
me the mystery I should be vastly obliged.” 

After a few minutes, during which we made acquaintance, we 
went to dine at the first restaurateur's whose shop caught our 
eye. At dessert a bottle of champagne completely refreshed 
and brightened up the memories of this odd old soldier. He 
told me his story, and I said that he had every reason to 
exclaim “ Well known.” 

When she got home, she teased me to that extent, and made 
so many promises, that I consented to communicate to her the 
old soldier’s confidences. Next day she received the following 
episode of an epic which one might call “The Frenchman in 
Egypt.” 

During the expedition in Upper Egypt under General 
Desaix, a Provençal soldier fell into the hands of the Man- 
grabins, and was taken by these Arabs into the deserts beyond 
the falls of the Nile. 

In order to place a sufficient distance between themselves 


A PASSION IN THE DESERT 85 

and the French army, the Mangrabins made forced marches, 
and only rested during the night. They camped round a well 
overshadowed by palm trees under which they had previously 
concealed a store of provisions. Not surmising that the notion 
of flight would occur to their prisoner, they contented them- 
selves with binding his hands, and after eating a few dates, 
and given provender to their horses, went to sleep. 

When the brave Provençal saw that his enemies were no 
longer watching him, he made use of his teeth to steal a 
scimitar, fixed the blade between his knees, and cut the cords 
which prevented him using his hands; in a moment he was 
free. He at once seized a rifle and a dagger, then taking the 
precaution to provide himself with a sack of dried dates, oats, 
and powder and shot, and to fasten a scimitar to his waist, he 
leapt on to a horse, and spurred on vigorously in the direction 
where he thought to find the French army. So impatient was 
he to see a bivouac again that he pressed on the already tired 
courser at such speed, that its flanks were lacerated with his 
spurs, and at last the poor animal died, leaving the Frenchman 
alone in the desert. After walking some time in the sand with 
all the courage of an escaped convict, the soldier was obliged 
to stop, as the day had already ended. In spite of the beauty 
of an oriental sky at night, he felt he had not strength enough 
to go on. Fortunately he had been able to find a small hill, on 
the summit of which a few palm trees shot up into the air ; it was 
their verdure seen from afar which had brought hope and con- 
solation to his heart. His fatigue was so great that he lay down 
upon a rock of granite, capriciously cut out like a camp-bed ; 
there he fell asleep without taking any precaution to defend 
himself while he slept. He had made the sacrifice of his life. 
His last thought was one of regret. He repented having left 
the Mangrabins, whose nomad life seemed to smile on him 


86 


BALZAC. 


now that he was far from them and without 'help. He was 
awakened by the sun, whose pitiless rays fell with all their 
force on the granite and produced an intolerable heat — for he 
had had the stupidity to place himself inversely to the shadow 
thrown by the verdant majestic heads of the palm trees. He 
looked at the solitary trees and shuddered — they reminded him 
of the graceful shafts crowned with foliage which characterise 
the Saracen columns in the cathedral of Arles. 

But when, after counting the palm trees, he cast his eyes 
around him, the most horrible déspair was infused into his soul. 
Before him stretched an ocean without limit. The dark sand 
of the desert spread further than sight could reach in every 
direction, and glittered like steel struck with bright light. It 
might have been a sea of looking-glass, or lakes melted 
together in a mirror. A fiery vapour carried up in streaks 
made a perpetual whirlwind over the quivering land. The sky 
was lit with an oriental splendour of insupportable purity, 
leaving nought for the imagination to desire. Heaven and 
earth were on fire. 

The silence was awful in its wild and terrible majesty. 
Infinity, immensity, closed in upon the soul from every side. 
Not a cloud in the sky, not a breath in the air, not a flaw on 
the bosom of the sand, ever moving in diminutive waves ; 
the horizon ended as at sea on a clear day, with one line 
of light, definite as the cut of a sword. 

The Provençal threw his arms round the trunk of one of 
the palm trees, as though it were the body of a friend, and then 
in the shelter of the thin straight shadow that the palm cast 
upon the granite, he wept. Then sitting down he remained as 
he was, contemplating with profound sadness the implacable 
scene, which was all he had to look upon. He cried aloud, to 
measure the solitude. His voice, lost in the hollows of the hill, 


A PASSION IN THE DESERT. 


87 


sounded faintly, and aroused no echo — the echo was in his own 
heart. The Provençal was twenty-two years old : — he loaded 
his carbine. 

“There’ll be time enough,” he said to himself, laying 
on the ground the weapon which alone could bring him 
deliverance. 

Looking by turns at the black expanse and the blue expanse, 
the soldier dreamt of France — he smelt with delight the 
gutters of Paris — he remembered the towns through which 
he had passed, the faces of his fellow-soldiers, the most 
minute details of his life. His southern fancy soon showed 
him the stones of his beloved Provence, in the play of the 
heat which waved over the spread sheet of the desert. Fearing 
the danger of this cruel mirage, he went down the opposite 
side of the hill to that by which he had come up the day 
before. The remains of a rug showed that this place of refuge 
had at one time been inhabited ; at a short distance he saw 
some palm trees full of dates. Then the instinct which binds 
us to life awoke again in his heart. He hoped to live long 
enough to await the passing of some Arabs, or perhaps he 
might hear the sound of cannon ; for at this time Bonaparte 
was traversing Egypt. 

This thought gave him new life. The palm tree seemed to 
bend with the weight of the ripe fruit. He shook some of it 
down. When he tasted this unhoped-for manna, he felt sure 
that the palms had been cultivated by a former inhabitant — 
the savoury, fresh meat of the dates were proof of the care 
of his predecessor. He passed suddenly from dark despair 
to an almost insane joy. He went up again to the top of the 
hill, and spent the rest of the day in cutting down one of the 
sterile palm trees, which the night before had served him for 
shelter. A vague memory made him think of the animals of 


83 


BALZAC. 


the desert ; and in case they might come to drink at the spring, 
visible from the base of the rocks but lost further (Jown, he 
resolved to guard himself from their visits by placing a barrier 
at the entrance of his hermitage. 

In spite of his diligence, and the strength which the fear of 
being devoured asleep gave him, he was unable to cut the palm 
in pieces, though he succeeded in cutting it down. At eventide 
the king of the desert fell ; the sound of its fall resounded far 
and wide, like a sigh in the solitude ; the soldier shuddered as 
though he had heard some voice predicting woe. 

But like an heir who does not long bewail a deceased parent, 
he tore off from this beautiful tree the tall broad green leaves 
which are its poetic adornment, and used them to mend the 
mat on which he was to sleep. 

Fatigued by the heat and his work, he fell asleep under the 
red curtains of his vet cave. 

In the middle of the night his sleep was troubled by an 
extraordinary noise ; he sat up, and the deep silence around 
allowed him to distinguish the alternative accents of a respira- 
tion whose savage energy could not belong to a human 
creature. 

A profound terror, increased still further by the darkness, the 
silence, and his waking images, froze his heart within him. He 
almost felt his hair stand on end, when by straining his eyes to 
their utmost he perceived through the shadow two faint yellow 
lights. At first he attributed these lights to the reflection of his 
own pupils, but soon the vivid brilliance of the night aided him 
gradually to distinguish the objects around him in the cave, 
and he beheld a huge animal lying but two steps from him. 
Was it a lion, a tiger, or a crocodile ? 

The Provençal was not educated enough to know under what 
species his enemy ought to be classed ; but his fright was all 


A PASSION IN THE DESERT 


89 


the greater, as his ignorance led him to imagine all terrors at 
once ; he endured a cruel torture, noting every variation of the 
breathing close to him without daring to make the slightest 
movement. An odour, pungent like that of a fox, but more 
penetrating, profounder — so to speak— filled the cave, and when 
the Provençal became sensible of this, his terror reached its 
height, for he could no longer doubt the proximity of a terrible 
companion, whose royal dwelling served him for a shelter. 

Presently the reflection of the moon descending on the 
horizon, lit up the den, rendering gradually visible and 
resplendent the spotted skin of a panther. 

This lion of Egypt slept, curled up like a big dog, the peaceful 
possessor of a sumptuous niche at the gate of an hôtel ; its eyes 
opened for a moment and closed again ; its face was turned 
towards the man. A thousand confused thoughts passed 
through the Frenchman’s mind ; first he thought of killing it 
with a bullet from his gun, but he saw there was not enough 
distance between them for him to take proper aim — the shot 
would miss the mark. And if it were to wake 1 — the thought 
made his limbs rigid. He listened to his own heart beating in 
the midst of the silence, and cursed the too violent pulsations 
which the flow of blood brought on, fearing to disturb that 
sleep which allowed him time to think of some means of 
escape. 

Twice he placed his hand on his scimitar, intending to cut off 
the head of his enemy ; but the difficulty of cutting the stiff 
short hair compelled him to abandon this daring project. To 
miss would be to die for certain , he thought ; he preferred the 
chances of fair fight, and made up his mind to wait till morning ; 
the morning did not leave him long to wait. 

He could now examine the panther at ease ; its muzzle was 
smeared with blood. 


go 


BALZAC. 


“She’s had a good dinner,” he thought, without troubling 
himself as to whether her feast might have been on human 
flesh. “ She won’t be hungry when she gets up.” 

It was a female. The fur on her belly and flanks was 
glistening white ; many small marks like velvet formed 
beautiful bracelets round her feet ; her sinuous tail was also 
white, ending with black rings ; the overpart of her dress, 
yellow like unburnished gold, very lissom and soft, had the 
characteristic blotches in the form of rosettes, which distinguish 
the panther from every other feline species. 

This tranquil and formidable hostess snored in an attitude 
as graceful as that of a cat lying on a cushion. Her blood- 
stained paws, nervous and well armed, were stretched out 
be f ore her face, which rested upon them, and from which 
radiated her straight slender whiskers, like threads of silver. 

If she had been like that in a cage, the Provençal would 
doubtless have admired the grace of the animal, and the 
vigorous contrasts of vivid colour which gave her robe an 
imperial splendour ; but just then his sight was troubled by 
her sinister appearance. 

The presence of the panther, even asleep, could not fail to 
produce the effect which the magnetic eyes of the serpent are 
said to have on the nightingale. 

For a moment the courage of the soldier began to fail before 
this danger, though no doubt it would have risen at the mouth 
ot a cannon charged with shell. Nevertheless, a bold thought 
brought daylight to his soul and sealed up the source of the 
cold sweat which sprang forth on his brow. Like men driven 
to bay, who defy death and offer their body to the smiter, so 
he, seeing in this merely a tragic episode, resolved to play his 
part with honour to the last. 

“The day before yesterday the Arabs would have killed 


A PASSION IN THE DESERT, 


9i 


nÆ perhaps,” he said ; so considering himself as good as dead 
already, he waited bravely, with excited curiosity, his enemy’s 
awakening. 

When the sun appeared, the panther suddenly opened her 
eyes ; then she put out her paws with energy, as if to stretch 
them and get rid of cramp. At last she yawned, showing 
the formidable apparatus of her teeth and pointed tongue, 
rough as a file. 

“A regular petite maîtresse ,” thought the Frenchman, seeing 
her roll herself about so softly and coquettishly. She licked 
off the blood which stained her paws and muzzle, and scratched 
her head with reiterated gestures full of prettiness. “All right, 
make a little toilet,” the Frenchman said to himself, beginning 
to recover his gaiety with his courage; “we’ll say good morning 
to each other presently,” and he seized the small short dagger 
which he had taken from the Mangrabins. At this moment 
the panther turned her head towards the man and looked at 
him fixedly without moving. 

The rigidity of her metallic eyes and their insupportable 
lustre made him shudder, especially when the animal walked 
towards him. But he looked at her caressingly, staring into 
her eyes in order to magnetise her, and let her come quite 
close to him ; then with a movement both gentle and amorous, 
as though he were caressing the most beautiful of women, he 
passed his hand over her whole body, from the head to the 
tail, scratching the flexible vertebrae which divided the panther’s 
yellow back. The animal waved her tail voluptuously, and her 
eyes grew gentle ; and when for the third time the Frenchman 
accomplished this interested flattery, she gave forth one of 
those purrings by which our cats express their pleasure ; but 
this murmur issued from a throat so powerful and so deep, 
that it resounded through the cave like the last vibrations of 


92 


BALZAC ; 


an organ in a church. The man, understanding the importance 
of his caresses, redoubled them in such a way as to surprise 
and stupefy his imperious courtesan. When he felt sure of 
having extinguished the ferocity of his capricious companion, 
whose hunger had so fortunately been satisfied the day before, 
he got up to go out of the cave ; the panther let him go out, 
but when he had reached the summit of the hill she sprang 
with the lightness of a sparrow hopping from twig to twig, 
and rubbed herself against his legs, putting up her back after 
the manner of all the race of cats. Then regarding her guest 
with eyes whose glare had softened a little, she gave vent to 
that wild cry which naturalists compare to the grating of a 
saw. 

“ She is exacting,” said the Frenchman, smiling. 

He was bold enough to play with her ears ; he caressed her 
belly and scratched her head as hard as he could. When he 
saw he was successful he tickled her skull with the point of his 
dagger, watching for the moment to kill her, but the hardness 
of her bones made him tremble for his success. 

The sultana of the desert showed herself gracious to her 
slave ; she lifted her head, stretched out her neck, and mani- 
fested her delight by the tranquillity of her attitude. It 
suddenly occurred to the soldier that to kill this savage 
princess with one blow he must poignard her in the throat. 

He raised the blade, when the panther, satisfied, no doubt, 
laid herself gracefully at his feet, and cast up at him glances in 
which, in spite of their natural fierceness, was mingled con- 
fusedly a kind of good-will. The poor Provençal ate his dates, 
leaning against one of the palm trees, and casting his eyes 
alternately on the desert in quest of some liberator and on his 
terrible companion to watch her uncertain clemency. 

The panther looked at the place where the date stones fell, 


A PASSION IN TUP DESERT. 


93 

and every time that he threw one down her eyes expressed an 
incredible mistrust. 

She examined the man with an almost commercial prudence. 
However, this examination was favourable to him, for when he 
had finished his meagre meal she licked his boots with her 
powerful rough tongue, brushing off with marvellous skill the 
dust gathered in the creases. 

“Ah, but when she’s really hungry 1” thought the French- 
man. In spite of the shudder this thought caused him, 
the soldier began to measure curiously the proportions of 
the panther, certainly one of the most splendid specimens 
of its race. She was three feet high and four feet long 
without counting her tail ; this powerful weapon, rounded 
like a cudgel, was nearly three feet long. The head, large 
as that of a lioness, was distinguished by a rare expression of 
refinement. The cold Cruelty of a tiger was dominant, it was 
true, but there was also a vague resemblance to the face of a 
sensual woman. Indeed, the face of this solitary queen had 
something of the gaiety of a drunken Nero : she had satiated 
herself with blood, and she wanted to play. 

The soldier tried if he might walk up and down, and the 
panther left him free, contenting herself with following him with 
her eyes, less like a faithful dog than a big Angora cat, observing 
everything, and every movement of her master. 

When he looked round, he saw, by the spring, the remains of 
his horse ; the panther had dragged the carcase all that way ; 
about two-thirds of it had been devoured already. The sight 
reassured him. 

It was easy to explain the panther’s absence, and the respect 
she had had for him while he slept. The first piece of good 
luck emboldened him to tempt the future, and he conceived the 
wild hope of continuing on good terms with the panther dur.ng 


94 


BALZAC. 


the entire day, neglecting no means of taming her and 
remaining in her good graces. 

He returned to her, and had the unspeakable joy of seeing 
her wag her tail with an almost imperceptible movement at his 
approach. He sat down then, without fear, by her side, and 
they began to play together ; he took her paws and muzzle, 
pulled her ears, rolled her over on her back, stroked her 
warm, delicate flanks. She let him do whatever he liked, and 
when he began to stroke the hair on her feet she drew her 
claws in carefully. 

The man, keeping the dagger in one hand, thought to plunge 
it into the belly of the too confiding panther, but he was afraid 
that he would be immediately strangled in her last convulsive 
struggle ; besides, he felt in his heart a sort of remorse which 
bid him respect a creature that had done him no harm. He 
seemed to have found a friend, in à boundless desert ; half 
unconsciously he thought of his first sweetheart, whom he had 
nicknamed “ Mignonne ” by way of contrast, because she was 
so atrociously jealous, that all the time of their love he was in 
fear of the knife with which she had always threatened him. 

This memory of his early days suggested to him the idea of 
making the young panther answer to this name, now that he 
began to admire with less terror her swiftness, suppleness, and 
softness. Towards the end of the day he had familiarised 
himself with his perilous position ; he now almost liked the 
painfulness of it. At last his companion had got into the habit 
of looking up at him whenever he cried in a falsetto voice, 
“Mignonne.” 

At the setting of the sun Mignonne gave, several times 
running, a profound melancholy cry. “ She’s been well brought 
up,” said the light-hearted soldier ; “ she says her prayers.” 
But this mental joke only occurred to him when he noticed 


A PASSION IN THE DESERT 


95 


what a pacific attitude his companion remained in. “Come, 
ma petite blonde, I’ll let you go to bed first,” he said to her, 
counting on the activity of his own legs to run away as quickly 
as possible, directly she was asleep, and seek another shelter 
for the night. 

The soldier awaited with impatience the hour of his flight, 
and when it had arrived he walked vigorously in the direction 
of the Nile ; but hardly had he made a quarter of a league in 
the sand when he heard the panther bounding after him, crying 
with that saw-like cry, more dreadful even than the sound of 
her leaping. 

“Ah!” he said, “then she’s taken a fancy to me; she has 
never met any one before, and it is really quite flattering to 
have her first love.” That instant the man fell into one of those 
movable quicksands so terrible to travellers and from which it is 
impossible to save oneself. Feeling himself caught he gave a 
shriek of alarm ; the panther seized him with her teeth by 
the collar, and, springing vigorously backwards, drew him as if 
by magic out of the whirling sand. 

“Ah, Mignonne!” cried the soldier, caressing her enthu- 
siastically; “we’re bound together for life and death — but no 
jokes, mind ! ” and he retraced his steps. 

From that time the desert seemed inhabited. It contained a 
being to whom the man could talk, and whose ferocity was 
rendered gentle by him, though he could not explain to himself 
the reason for their strange friendship. Great as was the 
soldier’s desire to stay up on guard, he slept. 

On awakening he could not find Mignonne ; he mounted the 
hill, and in the distance saw her springing towards him after 
the habit of these animals, who cannot run on account of the. 
extreme flexibility of the vertebral column. Mignonne arrived, 
her jaws covered with blood ; she received the wonted caress 


BALZAC. 


96 


of her companion, showing with much purring how happy it 
made her. Her eyes, full of langour, turned still more gently 
than the day before towards the Provençal, who talked to her 
as one would to a tame animal. 

“Ah! Mademoiselle, you are a nice girl, aren’t you? Just 
look at that ! so we like to be made much of, don’t we ? Aren’t 
you ashamed of yourself? So you have been eating some 
Arab or other, have you ? that doesn’t matter. They’re animals 
just the same as you are ; but don’t you take to eating 
Frenchmen, or I shan’t like you any longer.” 

She played like a dog with its master, letting herself be rolled 
over, knocked about, and stroked, alternately ; sometimes she 
herself would provoke the soldier, putting up her paw with a 
soliciting gesture. 

Some days passed in this manner. This companionship 
permitted the Provençal to appreciate the sublime beauty of 
the desert ; now that he had a living thing to think about, 
alternations of fear and quiet, and plenty to eat, his mind 
became filled with contrasts and his life began to be diversified. 

Solitude revealed to him all her secrets, and enveloped him 
:red in the rising and setting of the 



world. He knew what it was to 


tremble when he heard over his head the hiss of a bird’s wings, 
so rarely did they pass, or when he saw the clouds, changing 
and many coloured travellers, melt one into another. He 
studied in the night time the effects of the moon upon the 
ocem of sand, where the simoom made waves swift of move- 
ment and rapid in their change. He lived the life of' the 
Eas’ern day, marvelling at its wonderful pomp; then, after 
having revelled in the siçht of a hurricane over the plain where 
the whirling sands made red, dry mists and death-bearing 
clouds, he would welcome the night with joy, for then fell the 


A PASSION IJV THE DESERT. 


97 


healthful freshness of the stars, and he listened to imaginary 
music in the skies. Then solitude taught him to unroll the 
treasures of dreams. He passed whole hours in remembering 
mere nothings, and comparing his present life with his past. 

At last he grew passionately fond of the panther ; for some 
sort of affection was a necessity. 

Whether it was that his will powerfully projected had modi- 
fied the character of his companion, or whether, because she 
found abundant food in her predatory excursions in the deserts, 
she respected the man’s life, he began to fear for it no longer, 
seeing her so well tamed. 

He devoted the greater part of his time to sleep, but he was 
obliged to watch like a spider in its web that the moment of 
his deliverance might not escape him, if any one should pass 
the line marked by the horizon. He had sacrificed his shirt to 
make a flag with, which he hung at the top of a palm tree, 
whose foliage he had torn off. Taught by necessity, he found 
the means of keeping it spread out, by fastening it with little 
sticks ; for the wind might not be blowing at the moment when 
the passing traveller was looking through the desert. 

It was during the long hours, when he had abandoned hope,, 
that he amused himself with the panther. He had come to 
learn the different inflections of her voice, the expressions of her 
eyes ; he had studied the capricious patterns of all the rosettes 
which marked the gold of her robe. Mignonne was not even 
angry when he took hold of the tuft at the end of her tail to 
count the rings, those graceful ornaments which glittered in the 
sun like jewellery. It gave him pleasure to contemplate the 
supple, fine outlines of her form, the whiteness of her belly, the 
graceful pose of her head. But it was especially when she was 
playing that he felt most pleasure in looking at her; the agility 
and youthful lightness of her movements were a continual 


BALZAC ; 


98 

surprise to him ; he wondered at the supple way which she 
jumped and climbed, washed herself and arranged her fur, 
crouched down and prepared to spring. However rapid her 
spring might be, however slippery the stone she was on, she 
would always stop short at the word “ Mignonne.” 

One day, in a bright mid-day sun, an enormous bird coursed 
through the air. The man left his panther to look at this new 
guest ; but after waiting a moment the deserted sultana growled 
deeply. 

“ My goodness ! I do believe she’s jealous,” he cried, seeing 
her eyes become hard again ; “ the soul of Virginie has passed 
into her body, that’s certain.” 

The eagle disappeared into the air, whilst the soldier admired 
the curved contour of the panther. 

But there was such youth and grace in her form ! she was 
beautiful as a woman ! the blond fur of her robe mingled 
well with the delicate tints of faint white which marked her 
flanks. 

The profuse light cast down by the sun made this living gold, 
these russet markings, to burn in a way to give them an inde- 
finable attraction. 

The man and the panther looked at one another with a look 
full of meaning ; the coquette quivered when she felt her friend 
stroke her head ; her eyes flashed like lightning — then she shut 
them tightly. 

“ She has a soul,” he said, looking at the stillness of this 
queen of the sands, golden like them, white like them, solitary 
and burning like them. 

•••••••# 

“ Well,” she said, “ I have read your plea in favour of beasts; 
but how did two so well adapted to understand each other 
end ? ” 


A PASSION IN THE DESERT 


99 


“ Ah, well ! you see, they ended as all great passions do end — 
by a misunderstanding. From some reason one suspects the 
other of treason ; they don’t come to an explanation through 
pride, and quarrel and part from sheer obstinacy.” 

“ Yet sometimes at the best moments a single word or a look 
are enough — but anyhow go on with your story.” 

“ It’s horribly difficult, but you will understand, after what 
the old villain told me over his champagne. He said — ‘ I 
don’t know if I hurt her, but she turned round, as if enraged, 
and with her sharp teeth caught hold of my leg — gently, I 
daresay ; but I, thinking she would devour me, plunged my 
dagger into her throat. She rolled over, giving a cry that froze 
my heart ; and I saw her dying, still looking at me without 
anger. I would have given all the world — my cross even, 
which I had not got then— to have brought her to life again. 
It was as though I had murdered a real person ; and the 
soldiers who had seen my flag, and were come to my assist- 
ance, found me in tears.’ 

“ * Well, sir,’ he said, after a moment of silence, ‘ since then 
I have been in war in Germany, ir. Spain, in Russia, in France; 
I’ve certainly carried my carcass about a good deal, but never 
have I seen anything like the desert. Ah ! yes, it is very 
beautiful ! ’ 

“ ‘ What did you feel there ?’ I asked him 

“ ‘ Oh ! that can’t be described, young man ! Besides, I am 
not always regretting my palm trees and my panther. I should 
have to be very melancholy for that. In the desert, you see, 
there is everything, and nothing.’ 

“ c Yes, but explain ’ 

“ ‘ Well,’ he said, with an impatient gesture, * it is God without 
mankind.’ ” 


► • 


E. S. 


LOST BY A LAUGH. 


“During the campaign of 1812,” said General Montriveau, “I 
was the involuntary cause of a terrible calamity. You, Doctor 
Bianchon, who study the mind so carefully when you study the 
human body, may perhaps find in this story a solution to some 
of your problems on the Will. 

“It was my second campaign. Like a simple young lieutenant 
of artillery, I loved danger and laughed at everything. 

“When we reached the Beresina, the army — as you know — 
was utterly disorganised and without any idea of military 
discipline. In fact, it was a mere crowd of men of all nations 
moving instinctively from north to south. The soldiers would 
drive away a ragged, bare-footed general from their camp-fires 
if he did not bring them food or fuel. Even after the passing 
of this celebrated river the confusion was as great as before. 

“ I had come quietly through the marshes ofZembin all alone, 
and was walking on, searching for a house where some one 
would take me in. Not finding one, or being driven away from 
those which I did find, towards evening I was fortunate 
enough to light upon a wretched little Polish farm. Nothing 
could give you an idea of the place unless you have seen the 
wooden hou;es of Lower Normandy or the poorest métairies 
of La Beauce. These dwellings consist of one single room 
divided off at one end by a partition of boards, the smaller 


LOST BY A LAUGH. 


IOI 


portion serving as a place to store fodder in. Although the 
twilight was growing dim, I had descried in the distance a thin 
line of smoke arising from this house. Hoping to find com- 
panions more compassionate than those to whom I had as yet 
addressed myself, I marched on bravely to the farm. I went in 
and found several officers seated at table, eating horse-flesh 
broiled over the coals, frozen beet-root, and potatoes. With 
them — no unusual sight — was a woman. I recognised two or 
three of the men as artillery captains belonging to the first 
regiment in which I had served. They greeted me with 
hurrahs and acclamations that would have surprised me indeed 
on the other side of the Beresina ; but just then the cold was 
less intense, my comrades were enjoying rest and warmth and 
food, the floor was strewn with trusses of straw, and altogether 
there seemed to be a prospect of passing a comfortable night. 
After all it was not much that we asked for then. My brother 
officers were philanthropists, when they could be so for nothing ; 
— by the way, one of the most usual modes of philanthropy. I 
sat down upon a heap of fodder and fell to. 

“ At the end of the table, on the side of the door communi- 
cating with the little room full of hay and straw, sat my former 
Colonel. Among all the motley crowd of men whom it has 
been my lot to. meet, he was one of the most extraordinary. 
He was an Italian. In southern countries, whenever human 
nature is fine, it is sublime. I do not know whether you 
have noticed the wonderful whiteness of Italians when their 
complexion is fair — it is marvellous — in the sunlight especially. 
When I read the fanciful portrait of Colonel Oudet which 
Charles Nodier has drawn us, I found my own impressions in 
every one of his polished semences. An Italian, like the 
majority of the officers of his regiment — otherwise drafted by 
the Emperor from the armée d'Eugène — my Colonel was a man 


102 


BALZAC. 


of lofty stature, eight or nine pouces high, admirably pro- 
portioned, a trifle stout perhaps, but of enormous strength, and 
as agile and wiry as a greyhound. In contrast with a profusion 
of black curls, the whiteness of the skin gleamed like a woman’s. 
He had small hands, beautiful feet, and a gracious mouth ; his 
nose was aquiline and finely formed, naturally pinched in at the 
point; in his frequent outbursts of passion it grew perfectly 
pallid. 

“ Indeed the violence of his temper was so incredible, words 
would fail to describe it ; but the sequel affords abundant 
proof. No one could lem tin unmoved before it. Perhaps 
I myself was the only person who was not afraid of 
him; but then he had conceived an extraordinary friendship 
for me. Whatever I did was right. When this passion was upon 
him, the muscles of his brow contracted, and formed a Delta, 
or rather the horse-shoe of Redgauntlet , in the middle of his 
forehead. This mark struck you perhaps with even more terror 
than the magnetic spaiks which flashed from his blue eyes. 
Then his whole body quivered, and his strength, ordinarily 
enormous, became almost boundless. He spoke with a strong 
grasseyement , and his voice, at least as power'ul as the voice of 
the Oudet of Charles Nodier, threw an incredible richness of 
tone into the consonant or syllable on which the grasseyement 
fell. If at certain moments this Parisian vulgarism of pro- 
nunciation was an additional charm in him, you must actually 
have heard it to conceive what a sense of power it conveyed 
when he gave the word of command or spoke under the 
influence of emotion. When he was calm his blue eyes 
beamed with angelic sweetness, and his clear-cut brow bore an 
expression full of charm. At a parade of the armée d'Italie 
there was not a man who could compare with him ; and at the 
time of the last review which Napoleon held before we crossed 


LOST BY A LAUGH, \ 


103 


the Russian frontier, even d’Orsay himself— the handsome 
d’Orsay — was surpassed by our Colonel. This favoured being 
was a mass of contradictions. Contrast is the essence of 
Passion. You need not ask me then whether he exercised over 
women that irresistible influence before which our nature yields 
like liquid glass beneath the blower’s pipe. However, by a 
strange fatality which perhaps a keen observer might explain, 
the Colonel failed or refused to make more than a very few 
conquests. 

“To give you an idea of his violence, I will tell you in a few 
words what I saw him do in one of these paroxysms of rage. 
One day we were ascending with our cannon a very narrow 
road that had a deep cutting on one side and a wood on the 
other. In the middle of the ascent we met another regiment of 
artillery headed by its colonel. This colonel tried to make the 
captain in command of the first battery of our regiment give 
way. Naturally enough the captain refused; so their colonel 
made a sign to his own first battery to advance. Notwith- 
standing the care which the driver took to keep as close to the 
wood as possible, the wheel of the first gun-carriage caught our 
captain’s right leg and broke the bone clean in two, hurling him 
off his horse on the opposite side. It was all done in a moment. 
Our colonel, who was only a little way off, guessing what the 
whole quarrel was about, gallops up at full speed, right 
through the wood and our artillery — we thought every 
instant his horse must have gone down, head over heels 
— and arrives on the scene in front of the other colonel, 
just at the moment that our captain cried out ‘ Help,’ and 
fell. Well, our Italian colonel was no longer a human being ! 
Foam burst from his mouth like the froth of champagne— he 
growled like a lion. Incapable of articulating a syllable, or 
even a cry, he made a terrible sign to his opponent, pointed to 


104 


BALZAC , 


the wood, and drew his sword. The two colonels entered the 
wood. In a couple of seconds we saw the aggressor stretched 
on the ground, his head cleft in two by our colonel’s sword. 
The men of the other regiment fell back;— the Deuce! and 
pretty quick too. Our captain — who was almost killed, and 
lay moaning in the mud where the wheel of the gun-carriage 
had thrown him— had a wife, a most charming Italian from 
Messina. She was not altogether indifferent to our colonel. 
It was this circumstance which had added fuel to his fury. 
Her husband was entitled to his protection; it was his duty to 
defend the man as much as the woman herself. 

“ Now in the cabin beyond Zembin, where I had received such 
a warm welcome, this very captain sat opposite me, and his 
wife was at the other side of the table, opposite the colonel. 
She was a little woman, this Messinian, and very dark ; her 
eyes were black and almond-shaped, within them glowed 
all the fervour of the Sicilian sun ; her name was Rosina. 
Just at that time she was pitiably thin; her cheeks, like fruit 
exposed to all the rough chances of the wayside, were stained 
with dust. Though she was worn out with travelling, scarcely 
covered by her rags, her hair matted and in disorder, muffled 
in the fragment of a shawl, yet there was still somewhat of 
the charm of womanhood about her. Her graceful gestures, 
her curled red lips, her white teeth, the outline of her face, 
the form of her breasts, these were charms which cold and 
want and misery could not quite efface ; to men who still could 
think of women they still spoke of love. Besides, Rosina 
possessed one of those natures apparently frail, but in reality 
full of nerve and power. 

“The r ace of her husband, a Piedmontese, suggested (if one 
can combine two such ideas) a sort of mocking good nature. 
He was a gentleman, brave, and well educated, but he appeared 


LOST BY A LAUGH, 


105 

to ignore the relations which had been existing for nearlv three 
years between his wife and the Colonel. I used to attribute 
this indifference to Italian manners, or to some home secret of 
their own. Still there was something in the man’s face which 
always inspired me with an involuntary distrust. H's lower lip 
was thin and very flexible, and turned down at the corners 
instead of up ; this feature seemed to me to betray an under- 
current of cruelty in a character apparently indolent and 
phlegmatic. 

“ You may easily imagine that the conversation when I arrived 
was not of a very brilliant order. My comrades were worn 
out, and ate in silence. Of course they asked me a few 
questions, and we told each other our tro lbles, interspersing 
our stories with remarks on the campaign, the cold, the generals 
and their mistakes, and the Russians. A moment or two 
after my arrival, the Colonel, having finished his meagre 
repast, wipes his moustache, wishes 11s good night, looks with 
his dark eyes at the Italian, and says to her: ‘Rosina.’ 
Then, without waiting for an answer, he goes to pass the night 
in the little store-room where the fodder was kept. 

“ It was not difficult to guess the meaning of the Colonel’s 
summons. Besides, the young woman allowed an indescribable 
gesture to escape her, which expressed not only the displeasure 
she must have felt at seeing their connection thus proclaimed 
abroad without any respect of persons, but also her conscious- 
ness of the insult offered both to her own dignity as a woman 
and to her husband. But more still the twitching of all her 
features, and the violent contraction of her eyebrows, seemed 
to betray a sort of presentiment ; perhaps she had some instinct 
of her fate. She sat on quietly at the table. A moment 
afterwards, probably as the Colonel lay down in his hay or 
straw bed, he repeated ‘Rosina.’ The accent of this second 


io6 


BALZAC. 


appeal was still more brutally interrogative than the first. All 
the impatience, the despotism, the Will of the man were 
expressed in that grasseyement of his, and his Italian elonga- 
tion of the vowels and consonants in those three syllables. 
Rosina grew pale, but she rose, passed out behind us and went 
to the Colonel. 

“All my comrades preserved a profound silence; but I un- 
happily, after locking at them all round, began to laugh, and 
then my laughter was repeated from mouth to mouth. 

“ ‘ Tu ridi said the husband. 

lii Ma foi! mon camarade /’ said I, becoming serious again, 

* I acknowledge that I am in the wrong ; I am sure I beg your 
pardon most heartily, and if you are not content with my 
apologies I am ready to give you satisfaction.’ 

“‘It is not you who are in the wrong, but I,’ he replied 
coldly. 

“ After this we lay down for the night in the room where we 
were, and soon were all sound asleep. 

“The next day, each man, without waking his neighbour or 
seeking a companion for the journey, started off again as h'.s 
fancy led him. It was this sort of egoism which made our 
retreat one of the most terrible dramas of selfishness, misery, 
and horror, ever played out under Heaven. 

“ However, about seven or eight hundred paces from our 
lodging, we all met again — almost all — and marched on 
together, one same necessity impelling us. We were like 
geese driven in flocks by the blind despotism of a child. When 
we had reached a mound, from whence the farm where we had 
spent the night was still in view, we heard cries like the bellow- 
ing of bulls, or the roaring of lions in the desert ; but no — it was 
a din that cannot be compared to any sound known to man. 
However, mingled with this ominous, horrible roaring, we could 


LOST BY A LAUGH. 


107 


distinguish the feeble cries of a woman. We all turned round, 
a prey to an indescribable feeling of terror. The house was no 
longer visible ; it had been barricaded, and was nothing but a 
pile of flame. Volumes of smoke, carried away by the wind, 
bore towards us these hoarse and hideous sounds, and with 
them a strong unspeakable odour. 

“A few paces from us came the Captain, walking up quickly 
to join our caravan. We a!i looked at him in silence, no one 
dared to question him ; but he, divining our curiosity, pointed 
with his right hand to his own breast and with his left to the 
fire, and said, ‘Sort iô ! 1 

“ We continued our march without making a single remark. 1 ' 

• • »*!■••• 

“There is nothing more horrible than the rebellion of a 
sheep,” said de Marsay. 


W W- 


GOLD. 


At this time I was living in a little street which no doubt you 
do not know, la rue de Lesdiguières ; it begins in la rue 
Saint Antoine, opposite a fountain near la place de la Bastille, 
and ends in la rue de la Cerisaie. The love of science had 
thrown me into a garret, wnere 1 worked all through the night ; 
the dav I spent at a neighbouring library, le Bibliothèque de 
Monsieur. I lived frugally, accepting all the conditions of 
monastic life — conditions so necessary to men at work. When 
the weather was fine, the farthest I went was for a w r alk on le 
boulevard Bourdon. One passion alone drew me out of my 
studious habits ; but even that was a study in itself. I used to 
go and watch the manners of the faubourg, its inhabitants and 
their characters. As I was as ill- clad as the workmen and 
indifferent to appearances, I did not in any way put them on 
their guard against me ; I was able to mix with them when 
they stood in groups, and watch them driving their bargains 
and disputing as they were leaving their work. With me 
observation had even then become intuitive ; it did not neglect 
the body, but it penetrated further, into the soul, or rather, it 
grasped the exterior details so perfectly, that it at once passed 
beyond. It gave me the faculty of living the life of the indi- 
vidual upon whom it exercised itself, by allowing me to sub- 
stitute myself for him, like the dervish in the Thousand and 


GOLD. 


109 

One Nights, who took possession of the body and soul of 
people over whom he pronounced certain words. 

Between eleven and twelve o’clock at night I might fall in 
with a workman and his wife returning together from the 
Ambigu Comique ; then I would amuse myself by following 
them from le boulevard du Pont-aux-Choux to le boulevard 
Beaumarchais. First of all, the good people would talk about 
the piece they had seen ; then, from the thread to the needle , 
they passed on to their own affairs. The mother would drag 
along her child by the hand without listening to his cries or his 
questions. Then the pair would count up the money to be 
paid them next day, and spend it in twenty different ways. 
Then there were details of housekeeping, grumblings about the 
enormous price of potatoes, or the length of the winter and the 
dearness of fuel ; and then forcible representations as to what 
was owing to the baker ; at last the discussion grew acrimo- 
nious, and each of them would betray his character in forcible 
expressions. As I listened to these people I was able to 
enter into their life ; I felt their rags upon my back, and 
walked with my feet in their worn-out shoes ; their desires, 
their wants— everything passed into my soul, or else it was 
my soul that passed into theirs. It was the dream of a man 
awake. I grew warm with them against some tyrann'cal fore- 
man, or the bad customers who made them return many times 
without paying them. To be quit of one’s own habits, to 
become another than oneself by an inebriation of the moral 
faculties, and to play this game at will— this formed my dis- 
traction. To what do I owe this gift ? Is it a kind of second 
sight? Is it one of those qualities which, if abused, induce 
madness ? I have never sought to find the cause of this 
power ; I possess it and I use it, that is all. It is enough to 
know, that, at that time, I had decomposed the elements of the 


IIO 


BALZAC , 


heterogeneous mass called the People — that I had analyzed it in 
such a way that I could set their proper value on its qualities, 
good and bad. I knew already the possible usefulness of the 
faubourg , that seminary of Revolution which contains heroes, 
inventors, men of practical science, rogues, villains, virtues and 
vices, all oppressed by misery, stifled by poverty, drowned in 
wine, worn out by strong drink. You could not imagine how 
many unknown adventures, how many forgotten dramas, how 
many horribb and beautiful things lie hidden in this town of 
sorrow. Imagination will never reach the truth that lurks 
there, for no man can go to seek it out, the descent is too 
deep to discover its marvellous scenes of tragedy and comedy, 
its masterpieces which are born of chance. 

I know not why I have kept the story I am about to relate, so 
long without telling it ; it is part of those strange tales stored 
in the bag whence memory draws them capriciously, like the 
numbers of a lottery. I have many more of them, as strange 
as this one, and as deeply buried ; they will have their turn, I 
assure you. 

One day my housekeeper, the wife of a workman, came to 
ask me to honour with my presence the marriage of one of her 
sisters. To make you understand what this marriage must 
have been like, I must tell you that I gave the poor creature 
forty sous a month ; for this she came every morning to make 
my bed, clean my shoes, brush my clothes, sweep the room, 
and get ready my déjeûner ; the rest of her time she went to 
turn the handle of a machine, earning at this hard work ten 
sous a day. Her husband, a cabinet-maker, earned four 
francs. But as they had a family of three children, it was 
almost impossible for them to get an honest living. I have 
never met with more thorough honesty than this man’s and 
woman’s. For five years after my leaving the district, la mère 


GOLD. 


in 


Vaillant used to come to congratulate me on my name day, and 
bring me a bouquet and some oranges, — and she was a woman 
who could never manage to save ten sous. Misery had drawn 
us together. I have never been able to give her more than ten 
francs , often borrowed on purpose. This may explain my 
promise to go to the wedding ; I relied upon effacing myself 
in the poor creatures’ merriment. 

The marriage feast, the ball, the whole entertainment took 
place on the first floor of a wine shop in la rue de Charenton. 
The room was large, papered up to the height of the tables 
with a filthy paper, and lit by lamps with tin reflectors ; along 
the walls were wooden benches. In this room were twenty- 
four people, all dressed in their best, decked with large 
bouquets and ribands, their faces flushed, full of the excitement 
of the courtille , dancing as if the world were coming to an 
end. The bride and bridegroom were embracing to the 
general satisfaction, and certain hee-hees / and haw-haws ! 
w'ere heard, facet'ous, but really less indecent. than the timid 
g^nces of girls who have been well brought up. The whole 
company expressed an animal contentment, which was some- 
how or other contagious. However, neither the physiognomies 
of the company, nor the wedding, nor in fact any of these 
people, have any connection with my story. Only bear in mind 
the strangeness of the frame. Picture to yourself the squalid, 
red shop, sniff the odour of the wine, listen to the howls of. 
merriment, linger a while in this faubourg, among those work- 
men and poor women and old men who had given themselves 
up to pleasure for a single night ! 

The orchestra was composed of three blind men from Les 
Quinze-Vingts ; the first was violin, the second clarionet, and the 
third flageolet. They were paid seven francs for the night 
among the three. You may imagine they did not give Rossini 


1 1 2 


BALZAC . 


or Beethoven at that price ; they played what they chose or 
could ; with charming delicacy, no one reproached them. 
Their music did such brutal violence to the drum of my ear, that, 
after glancing round at the company, I looked at the blind trio, — 
I was inclined to indulgence at once, when I recognised their 
uniform. The performers were in the embrasure of a window, 
so that you were obliged to be close to them to be able to dis- 
tinguish then features ; I did not go up immediately, but when 
I did get near them, I do not know how it was, but it was all 
over, the wedding party and the music disappeared ; my 
curiosity was excited to the highest degree, for my soul passed 
into the body of the man who played the clarionet. The violin 
and the flageolet had both quite ordinary faces, the usual face 
of the blind, intense, attentive, and grave ; but the clarionet’s 
was a phenomenon such as arrests and absorbs the attention of 
a philosopher or an artist. 

Imagine a plaster mask of Dante, lit up by the red glow of 
the quinquet lamp, and crowned with a forest of silver-white 
hair. The bitter, sorrowful expression of this magnificent head 
was intensified by blindness, for thought gave a new life to the 
dead eyes ; it was as if a scorching light came forth from 
them, the product of one single, incessant desire, itself inscribed 
in vigorous lines upon a prominent brow, scored with wrinkles, 
like the courses of stone in an old wall. The old man breathed 
into his instrument at random, without paying the least 
attention to the measure or the air ; his fingers rose and fell as 
they moved the worn-out keys with mechanical unconsciousness ; 
he did not trouble himself about making what are called in 
orchestral terms canards , but the dancers did not notice it 
any more than did my Italian’s two acolytes ; for I was 
determined he must be an Italian, and he was an Italian. 
There was something great and despotic in this old Homer 


GOLD. 


US 

keeping within himself an Odyssey doomed to oblivion. It was 
such real greatness that it still triumphed over his abject 
condition, a despotism so full of life that it dominated his 
poverty. None of the violent passions which lead a man to 
good as well as to evil, and make of him a convict or a hero, 
were wanting in that grandly hewn, lividly Italian face. The 
whole was overshadowed by grizzled eyebrows which cast into 
shade the deep hollows beneath ; one trembled lest one should 
see the light of thought reappear in them, as one fears to see 
brigands armed with torches and daggers come to the mouth of 
a cave. A lion dwelt within that cage of flesh, a lion whose 
rage was exhausted in vain against the iron of its bars. The 
flame of despair had sunk quenched into its ashes, the lava had 
grown cold ; but its channels, its destructions, a little smoke, 
bore evidence to the violence of the eruption and the ravages 
of the fire. These ideas revealed in, the man’s appearance were 
as burning in his soul as they were cold upon his face. 

Between each dance the violin and the flageolet, gravely 
occupied with their bottle and glass, hung their instruments on 
to the button of their reddish-coloured coats, stretched out their 
hand towards a little table placed in the embrasure of the 
window and on which was their canteen, and offered a full glass 
to the Italian ; — he could not take it himself, as the table was 
always behind his chair:— he thanked them by a friendly gesture 
of the head. Their movements were accomplished with that 
precision which is always so astonishing in the blind of Les 
Quinze-Vingts, it almost makes you believe that they can see. 

I went towards the three blind men, so as to be able to listen to 
them ; but when I was close to them they began to study me, 
and not, I suppose, recognising a workman, they remained shy. 

“ What country do you come from, you who are playing the 
clarionet ? ” 


847 


II4 BALZAG. 

“ From Venice,” replied the blind man, with a slight Italian 
accent. 

“Were you born blind, or did you become blind from — ?” 

“ F rom an accident,” he replied sharply ; “ it was a cursed 
cataract.” 

“ Venice is a fine town ; I have always had a longing to g© 
there.” 

The old man’s face lit up, his wrinkles worked, he was 
deeply moved. 

“If I went there with you,” he said, “you would not be 
losing your time.” 

“Don’t talk to him about Venice,” sa.d the violin, “or you’ll 
start our Doge off ; especially as he has already put two bottles 
into his mouthpiece — has our prince ! ” 

“ Come, let’s go on, fere Canard ,” said the flageolet. 

They all three began to play ; but all the time they took to 
execute four country-dances, the Venetian kept sniffing after 
me, he divined the excessive curiosity which I took in him. 
His expression lost the cold, sad look ; some hope — I know 
not what — enlivened all his features and ran like a blue flame 
through his wrinkles ; he smiled and wiped his bold, terrible 
brow ; in fact he grew cheerful, like a man getting on to his 
hobby. 

“How old are you ?” I asked. 

“ Eighty-two ! ” 

“ How long have you been blind?” 

“ Nearly fifty years,” he replied, with an accent which showed 
that his regrets did not arise only from his loss of sight, but 
from some great power of which he must have been despoiled. 

“ Why is it they call you the Doge ?” I asked. 

“ Oh, it’s their joke,” he said. “ I am a patrician of Venice, 
and might have been Doge like the rest.” 


GOLD. 


II5 

“ What is your name then ? ” 

“ Here, le père Canet,” he said. “My name could never be 
written on the registers different from that ; but in Italian it 
is Marco Facino Cane, principe di Varese.” 

“ Why ! you are descended from the famous co?idottiere 
Facino Cane, whose conquests passed to the Duke of Milan?” 

“ E vero” said he. “In those days the son of Cane took 
refuge in Venice to avoid being killed by the Visconti, and 
got himself inscribed in the Golden Book. But now there is 
no Cane, any more than there is a book.” And he made a ter- 
rible gesture of extinct patriotism and disgust for human affairs. 

“ But if you were a Senator of Venice, you must have been 
rich ; how did you come to lose your fortune?” 

At this question he raised his head towards me with a truly 
tragic movement as if to examine me, and answered, “ By . 
misfortune ! ” 

He no longer thought of drinking, and refused by a sign 
the glass of wine which the old flageolet was just at that 
moment holding out to him, then his head sank. These details 
were not of a kind to extinguish my curiosity. While these 
three machines were playing a country-dance, I watched the old 
Venetian noble with the feelings which devour a man of 
twenty. I saw Venice and the Adriatic ; I saw her in ruins 
in the ruins of his face. I walked in that city that is so dear 
to its inhabitants. I went from the Rialto to the Grand Canal, 
from the Quay of the Slaves to the Lido ; I came back to the 
unique, sublime Cathedral ; I examined the casements of the 
Casa d’Oro, each with its different ornament ; I gazed at the 
ancient palaces with all their wealth of marble ; in a word, I 
saw all those marvels with which the savant sympathizes the 
more because he can colour them to his liking, and does not 
rob his dreams of their poetry by the sight of the reality. I 


BALZAC. 


116 

followed back the course of the life of this scion of the greatest 
of the condottieri , and sought to discover in him the traces 
of his misfortunes, and the causes of the physical and moral 
degradation which rendered yet more beautiful the sparks of 
greatness and nobleness that had just revived. 

No doubt we shared the same thoughts, for I believe that 
blindness renders intellectual communication much more rapid, 
by preventing the attention from flitting away to exterior 
objects. The proof of our sympathy was not long in showing 
itself. Facino Cane stopped playing, rose from his seat, came 
to me, and said one word — 

“ Sortons ! ” 

The effect it produced on me was like an electric douche. I 
gave him my arm and we went out. 

When we were in the street, he said to me : “ Will you take 
me to Venice, will you be my guide, will you have faith in 
me ? You shall be richer than the ten richest houses in 
Amsterdam or London, richer than the Rothschilds, as rich 
as the Thousand and One Nights.” 

I thought the man was mad ; but there was a power in his 
voice which I obeyed. I let him guide me ; he led me towards 
the trenches of the Bastille, as if he had eyes. He sat down on 
a very lonely place, where the bridge connecting the Canal 
Saint Martin and the Seine has since been built. I placed 
myself on another stone in front of the old man, his white hair 
glistened like threads of silver in the moonlight. The silence, 
scarcely broken by the stormy sounds which reached us from 
the boulevards , the purity of the night — everything— combined 
to render the scene really fantastic. 

“You speak of millions to a young man, and do you think he 
would hesitate to endure a thousand evils in order to obtain 
them 1 But you are not making fun of me ?” 


GOLD, 


117 

“May I die without confession,” he said passionately, “if 
what I am going to tell you is not true. I was twenty — just as 
you are now — I was rich, handsome, and a noble. I began with 
the greatest of all madness — Love. I loved as men love no 
longer ; I even hid in a chest at the risk of being stabbed to 
death in it, without having received anything more than the 
promise of a kiss. To die for her seemed to me life itself. In 
1760 I became enamoured of one of the Vendramini, a woman 
of eighteen, who was married to a Sagredo, one of the richest 
senators, a man of thirty, and mad about his wife. My mistress 
and I were as innocent as two cherubim when il sposo surprised 
us talking of love. I was unarmed ; he missed me ; I leapt upon 
him and strangled him with my two hands, wringing his neck 
like a chicken. I wanted to fly with Bianca, but she would 
not follow me. It was so like a woman ! I went alone. I was 
condemned, and my goods were confiscated to the benefit of 
my heirs ; but I had rolled up and carried away with me five 
pictures by Tizian, my diamonds, and all my gold. I went to 
Milan, where I was left in peace, as my affair did not concern 
the State.” 

“Just one remark before I go on,” he said, after a pause. 
“Whether the fancies of a woman when she conceives, or while 
she is pregnant, influences her child or not, it is certain that 
my mother during her pregnancy had a passion for gold. I • 
have a monomania for gold, the satisfaction of which is so 
necessary to my life that, in all the situations I have found 
myself, I have never been without gold upon me. I have a 
constant mania for gold. When I was young I always wore 
jewellery, and always carried two or three hundred ducats abot t 
with me.” 

As he said these words he drew two ducats out of his pocket 
and showed them to me. 


n8 


BALZAC. 


“ I feel gold. Although I am blind I stop before jewellers’ 
shops. This passion ruined me. I became a gambler for the 
sake of gambling with gold. I was not a cheat, I was cheated ; 
I ruined myself. When I had no fortune left I was seized by a 
mad longing to see Bianca ; I returned to Venice in secret, 
found her again, and was happy for six months, hidder in her 
house and supported by her. I used to have delicious dreams 
of ending my life like this. She was courted by the Provedittore; 
he divined he had a rival. In Italy we have an instinct for 
them. The dastard played the spy upon us and caught us in 
bed. You may guess how fierce the fight was. I did not kill 
him, but I wounded him very severely. This event shattered 
our happiness ; since then I have never found another Bianca. 
I have enjoyed great favours ; I have lived at the Court of 
Louis XV. among the most celebrated women ; I have not 
found anywhere the noble qualities, the charms, the love, of my 
dear Venetian. The Provedittore had his servants with him ; 
he called them ; they surrounded the palace, and entered. I 
defended myself that I might die before Bianca’s eyes — she 
helped me to kill the Provedittore . Before, this woman had 
refused to fly with me ; but after six months of happiness she 
was ready to die on my body, and received several wounds. I 
was taken in a large mantle which they threw over me ; they 
rolled me up in it, carried me away in a gondola, and put me 
into a cell in the dungeon. I was twenty-two. I held the 
stump of my sword so tight that they would have been obliged 
to cut off my wrist in order to take it away. By a strange 
chance, or rather, inspired by some instinct of precaution, I hid 
this fragment of metal in a corrfer as a thing of possible use to 
me. My wounds were dressed, none of them were mortal ; at 
twenty -two a man recovers from anything. I was to die by 
beheading. I feigned sickness to gain time. I believed I 


GOLD. 


119 

was in a cell bordering on the canal; my project was, to 
escape by undermining the wall, and risk being drowned by 
swimming across the canal. My hopes were founded on the 
following calculations. Every time the jailer brought me food 
I read the notices fastened on the walls, such as — The Palace; 
The Canal ; The Subterranean Prisons. Thus I succeeded in 
making out a plan which caused me some little apprehension, 
but was to be explained by the actual state of the ducal palace, 
which has never been finished. With that genius which the 
longing to recover one’s liberty gives a man, I succeeded, by 
feeling the surface of a stone with the tips of my fingers, in 
deciphering an Arabic inscription, by which the author of the 
work warned his successors that he had dislodged two stones of 
the last course of masonry and dug eleven feet underground. 
To continue his work, it would be necessary to spread the 
fragments of stone and mortar caused by the work of excava- 
tion over the floor of the cell itself. Even if the jailers and 
Inquisatori had not felt satisfied, that, from the construction of 
the building, it only needed an external guard, the arrangement 
of the cells, into which was a descent of several steps, allowed 
the floor to be gradually raised without attracting the jailer’s 
notice. This immense labour had been superfluous at least for 
the unknown person who had undertaken it ; its incompletion 
was an evidence of his death. That his exertions might not be 
lost for ever, it was necessary that a prisoner should know 
Arabic. Now I had studied the oriental languages at the 
Armenian convent. A sentence written behind the stone told 
the unhappy man’s fate; he had died a victim to his immense 
wealth, which was coveted and seized by Venice. It would 
require a month to arrive at any result. While I worked, and 
during those moments when I was prostrate with fatigue, I 
heard the sound of gold ; I saw gold before me ; I was dazzled 


120 


BALZAC, 


by diamonds ! Now, listen ! One night my blunt sword 
touched wood. I sharpened the stump, and began to make a 
hole in the wood. In order to work, I used to crawl on my belly 
like a snake. I stripped myself and worked like a mole, with 
my hands in front, and using the rock itself as a fulcrum. Two 
nights before the day I was to appear before my judges, I 
determined to make one last effort during the night. I bored 
through the wood, and my sword touched nothing. You can 
imagine my amazement when I put my eye to the hole ! I was 
in the panelled roof of a cellar, in which a dim light enabled me 
to see a heap of gold. In the cellar were the Doge and one 
of the Ten. I could hear their voices. I learned from their 
conversation that here was the secret treasure of the Republic, the 
gifts of the Doges and the reserves of booty called The last hope 
of Venice , a certain proportion of the spoils of all expeditions. I 
was saved ! When the jailer came, I proposed to him to help me 
to escape and to fly with me, taking with us everything we 
could get. He had no cause to hesitate ; he agreed. A ship 
was about to set sail for the Levant; every precaution was 
taken. I dictated a plan to my accomplice, and Bianca assisted 
in carrying it out. To avoid giving the alarm, Bianca was to 
join us at Smyrna. In one night we enlarged the hole and 
descended into the secret treasury of Venice. What a night it 
was 1 I saw four tuns full of gold. In the first chamber the 
silver was piled up in two even heaps, leaving a path between 
them by which to pass through the room ; the coins formed 
banks, which covered the walls to the height of five feet. I 
thought the jailer would have gone mad ; he sang, he leapt, he 
laughed, he gambolled about in the gold. I threatened to 
throttle him if he wasted the time or made a noise. In his 
delight he did not at first see a table where the diamonds were. 
I swooped down upon it so skilfully that I was able to fill my 


GOLD. 


121 


sailor’s vest and the pockets of my pantaloons. My God ! I d.d 
not take a third part. Under this table were ingots of gold. I 
persuaded my companion to fill as many sacks as we could 
carry with gold, pointing out to him that it was the only 
way to avoid being discovered in a foreign country. The 
pearls, jewellery, and diamonds, I told him, would lead to our 
being found out. In spite of our greed, we could not take 
more than two thousand livres of gold, and this necessitated 
six journeys across the prison to the gondola. The sentinel at 
the water-gate had been bought with a bag containing ten 
livres of gold ; as for the two gondoliers, they believed they 
were serving the Republic. At daybreak we departed. When 
we were out at sea and I thought of that night, when I 
recalled the sensations which I had experienced, and seemed 
to see again that immense treasure, of which I calculated I must 
have left thirty millions in silver and twenty millions in gold, 
besides several millions in diamonds, pearls, and rubies ; a 
feeling of madness rose within me ; I had gold fever. We 
were landed at Smyrna, and immediately re-embarked for 
France. As we were going on board the French vessel, God 
did me the favour of relieving me of my accomplice. At the 
moment I did not think of all the bearings of this mishap ; I was 
greatly rejoiced at it. We were so completely enervated that 
we remained in a state of torpor, without speaking, waiting 
until we were in a place of safety to play our parts at at our 
ease. It is not to be wondered at that the fellow’s head had 
been turned. You will see how God punished me. I did not 
consider myself safe until I had disposed of two-thirds of my 
diamonds in London and Amsterdam, and realized my gold 
dust in negotiable species. For five years I hid myself in 
Madrid ; then in 1770 I came to Paris under a Spanish name, 
and lived in the most brilliant style. 


122 


BALZAC 


Bianca was dead. 

In the midst of my pleasures, when I was enjoying a fortune 
of six millions, I was struck with blindness. I conclude that 
this infirmity was the result of my sojourn in the prison and 
my labours in the dark, if indeed my faculty for seeing gold 
did not imply an abuse of the powers of vision and predestine 
me to lose my eyes. At this time I loved a woman to whom I 
had resolved to link my fate. I had told her the secret of my 
name ; she belonged to a powerful family, and I had every 
hope from the favour shown me by Louis XV. ; she was a 
friend of Madame du Barry. I had put my trust in this woman ; 
she advised me to consult a famous oculist in London ; then, 
af:er staying in the town for some months, she deserted me in 
Hyde Park, robbing me of the whole of my fortune and leaving 
me without resources. I was obliged to conceal my name, for it 
would have exposed me to the vengeance of Venice. I could 
not invoke any one’s help ; I was afraid of Venice. The spies 
whom this woman had attached to my person had made capital 
out of my blindness. — I spare you the history of adventures 
worthy of Gil Bias. — Your Revolution came ; I was obliged to 
enter at Les Quinze-Vingts ; this creature got me admitted after 
having kept me for two years at Bisêtre as insane ; I have 
never been able to kill her, I could not see to, and I was too 
poor to pay another hand. If, before I lost Benedetto Carpi, 
my jailer, I had consulted him on the situation of my cell, 
I should have been able to find the treasury again and return 
to Venice when the Republic was abolished by Napoleon. 
However, in spite of my blindness, let us go to Venice ! I will 
find the door of the prison, I shall see the gold through the 
walls, I shall feel it where it lies buried beneath the waters ; for 
the events which overturned the power of Venice are such that 
the secret of the treasury must have died with Vendramino, the 


GOLD. 


123 


brother of Bianca, a doge who, I hoped, would have made my 
peace with the Ten. I addressed notes to the First Consul, 
I proposed an agreement with the Emperor of Austria; every 
one treated me as a madman 1 Come, let us start for Venice, 
let us start beggars ; we shall come back millionaires ; we will 
buy back my property, and you shall be my heir, you shall be 
Prince of Varese. 

I was thunderstruck at this confidence, at the sight of that 
white head ; before the black waters of the trenches of the 
Bastille sleeping as still* as the canals of Venice, it assumed in 
my imagination the proportions of a poem. I gave no answer. 
Facino Cane no doubt believed that I judged him, like all the 
rest. w«*h disdainful pity; he made a gesture expressive of all 
the philosophy of despair. Perhaps his story had carried him 
back to those happy days at Venice; he seized his clarionet 
and played with the deepest pathos a Venetian song, a bar- 
carolle in which he recovered all his first talent — the talent 
which was his when he was a patrician and in love. It was as 
it were a Super flumina Babylonis . My eyes filled with tears. 
If some belated passers-by chanced to be walking along le 
boulevard Bourdon, I dare say they stopped to listen to this 
last prayer of the exile, this last regret of a lost name, mingled 
with memories of Bianca. But gold soon got the mastery 
again, and its fatal passion quenched the glimmering of youth. 

“That treasure!” he said; “I see it always, waking and in 
my dreams ; I take my walks there, the diamonds sparkle, I 
am not so blind as you think ; gold and diamonds lighten my 
night, the night of the last Facino Cane, for my title passes to 
the Memmi. Good God ! the murderer’s punishment has 
begun betimes ! Ave Maria!" . . . 

He recited some prayers which I could not hear. 

“ We will go to Venice,” I exclaimed, as he was getting up. 


124 


BALZAC 


“Then I have found my man,” he cried, with a glow upon 
his face. I gave him my arm and led him back ; at the door 
of Les Quinze-Vingts he pressed my hand ; just then some of 
the people from the wedding were going home, shouting enough 
to blow one’s head off. 

“We will start to-morrow ?” said the old man. 

“As soon as we have got some money.” 

“ But we can go on foot ; I will ask alms — I am strong, and 
when a man sees gold before him he is young.” 

Facino Cane died during the wintei after lingering tor two 
months. The pool man had caugrn a chill. 


w. w. 


DOOMED TO LIVE. 


The clock of the little town of Menda had just struck mid- 
night. At this moment a young French officer was leaning 
on the parapet of a long terrace which bounded the gardens 
of the castle. He seemed plunged in the deepest thought — 
a circumstance unusual amid the thoughtlessness of military 
life ; but it must be owned that never were the hour, 
the night, and the place more propitious to meditation. The 
beautiful Spanish sky stretched out its azure dome above his 
head. The glittering stars and the soft moonlight lit up a 
charming valley that unfolded all its beauties at his feet. 
Leaning against a blossoming orange tree he could see, a 
hundred feet below him, the town of Menda, which seemed to 
have been placed for shelter from the north winds at the foot of 
the reck on which the castle was built. As he turned his head 
he could see the sea, framing the landscape with a broad silver 
sheet of glistening water. The castle was a blaze of light. 
The mirth and movement of a ball, the music of the orchestra, 
the laughter of the officers and their partners in the dance, 
were borne to him mingled with the distant murmur of the 
waves. The freshness of the night imparted a sort of energy 
to his limbs, weary with the heat of the day. Above all, the 
gardens were planted with trees so aromatic, and flowers so 
fragrant, that the young man stood plunged, as it were, in a 
bath of per urnes. 


126 


BALZAC . 


The castle of Menda belonged to a Spanish grandee, then 
living there with his family. During the whole of the evening 
his eldest daughter had looked at the officer with an interest 
so tinged with sadness that the sentiment of compassion thus 
expressed by the Spaniard might well call up a reverie in the 
Frenchman’s mind. 

Clara was beautiful, and although she had three brothers 
and a sister, the wealth of the Marques de Leganes seemed 
great enough for Victor Marchand to believe that the young 
lady would have a rich dowry. But how dare he hope that 
the most bigoted old hidalgo in all Spain would ever give 
his daughter to the son of a Parisian grocer? Besides, the 
French were hated. The Marques was suspected by General 
Gautier, who governed the province, of planning a revolt in 
favour of Ferdinand VII. For this reason the battalion com- 
manded by Victor Marchand had been cantonned in the little 
town of Menda, to hold the neighbouring hamlets, which were 
dependent on the Marques, in check. Recent despatches from 
Marshal Ney had given ground for fear that the English would 
shortly land on the coast, and had indicated the Marques as 
a man who carried on communication with the cabinet of 
London. 

In spite, therefore, of the welcome which the Spaniard had 
given him and his soldiers, the young officer Victor Marchand 
remained constantly on his guard. As he was directing his 
steps towards the terrace whither he had come to examine the 
state of the town and the country districts entrusted to his care, 
he debated how he ought to interpret the friendliness which the 
Marques had unceasingly shown him, and how the tranquillity 
of the country could be reconciled with his General’s uneasiness. 
But in one moment these thoughts were driven from his mind 
by a feeling of caution and well-grounded curiosity. He had 


DOOMED TO LIVE. 


127 


just perceived a considerable number of lights in the town. In 
spite of the day being the Feast of St. James, he had given 
orders, that very morning, that all lights should be extinguished 
at the hour prescribed by his regulations ; the castle alone being 
excepted from this order. He could plainly see, here and 
there, the gleam of his soldiers’ bayonets at their accustomed 
posts ; but there was a solemnity in the silence, and nothing to 
suggest that the Spaniards were a prey to the excitement of a 
festival. After having sought to explain the offence of which 
the inhabitants were guilty, the mystery appeared all the more 
unaccountable to him, because he had left officers in charge of 
the night police and the rounds. With all the impetuosity of 
youth, he was just about to leap through a breach and descend 
the rocks in haste, and thus arrive more quickly than by the 
ordinary road at a small outpost placed at the entrance of the 
town nearest to the castle, when a faint sound stopped him. 
He thought he heard the light footfall of a woman upon the 
gravel walk. He turned his head and saw nothing; but his 
gaze was arrested by the extraordinary brightness of the sea. 
All of a sudden he beheld a sight so portentous that he stood 
dumbfounded ; he thought that his senses deceived him. In 
the far distance he could distinguish sails gleaming white in the 
moonlight. He trembled and tried to convince himself that 
this vision was an optical illusion, merely the fantastic effect of 
the moon on the waves. At this moment a hoarse voice pro- 
nounced his name. He looked towards the breach, and saw 
slowly rising above it the head of the soldier whom he had 
ordered to accompany him to the castle. 

“ Is that you, Commandant ?” 

“ Yes ; what do you want ?” replied the young man in a low 
voice. A sort of presentiment warned him to be cautious. 

“Those rascals down there are stirring like worms. I 


128 BALZAC. 

have hurried, with your leave, to tell you my own little 
observations.” 

“ Go on,” said Victor Marchand. 

“ I have just followed a man from the castle who came in this 
direction with a lantern in his hand. A lantern’s a frightfully 
suspicious thing. I don’t fancy it was tapers my fine 
Catholic was going to light at this time of night. ‘They 
want to eat us body and bones!’ says I to myself; so I 
went on his track to reconnoitre. There, on a ledge of rock, 
not three paces from here, I discovered a great heap of 
faggots.” 

Suddenly a terrible shriek rang through the town, and cut 
the soldier short. At the same instant a gleam of light flashed 
before the Commandant. The poor grenadier received a bail in 
the head and fell. A fire of straw and dry wood burst into 
flame like a house on fire, not ten paces from the young man. 
The sound of the instruments and the laughter ceased in the 
ball-room. The silence of death, broken only by groans, had 
suddenly succeeded to the noises and music of the feast. The 
fire of a cannon roared over the surface of the sea. Cold sweat 
trickled down the young officer’s forehead; he had no sword. 
He understood that his men had been slaughtered, and the 
English were about to disembark. If he lived he saw himself 
dishonoured, summoned before a council of war. Then he 
measured with his eyes the depth of the valley. He sprang 
forward, when just at that moment his hand was seized by the 
hand of Clara. 

“Fly!” said she; “my brothers are following to kill you. 
Down yonder at the foot of the rock you will find Juanito’s 
andalusian. Quick ! ” 

The young man looked at her for a moment, stupefied. She 
pushed him on ; then, obeying the instinct of self-preservation 


DOOMED TO LIVE. 


129 


which never forsakes even the bravest man, he rushed down 
the park in the direction she had indicated. He leapt from 
rock to rock, where only the goats had ever trod before; he 
heard Clara crying out to her brothers to pursue him ; he 
heard the footsteps of the assassins ; he heard the balls of 
several discharges whistle about his ears ; but he reached the 
valley, he found the horse, mounted, and disappeared swift as 
lightning. In a few hours he arrived at the quarters occupied 
by General Gautier. He found him at dinner with his staff. 

“ I bring you my life in my hand ! ” cried the Commandant, 
his face pale and haggard. 

He sat down and related the horrible disaster. A dreadful 
silence greeted his story. 

“You appear to me to be more unfortunate than criminal,” 
said the terrible General at last. “You are not accountable 
for the crime of the Spaniards, and unless the Marshal 
decides otherwise, I acquit you.” 

These words could give the unfortunate officer but slight 
consolation. 

“ But when the Emperor hears of it!” he exclaimed. 

“ He will want to have you shot,” said the General. “ How- 
ever But we will talk no more about it,” he added severely, 

“except how we are to take such a revenge as will strike 
wholesome fear upon this country, where they carry on war 
like savages.” 

One hour afterwards, a whole regiment, a detachment of 
cavalry, and a convoy of artillery were on the road. The 
General and Victor marched at the head of the column. The 
soldiers, informed of the massacre of their comrades, were 
filled with extraordinary fury. The distance which separated 
the town of Menda from the general quarters was passed with 
marvellous rapidity. On the road the General found whole 


BALZAC. 


13° 

villages under arms. Each of these wretched townships was 
surrounded and their inhabitants decimated. 

By some inexplicable fatality, the English ships stood off in- 
stead of advancing. It was known afterwards that these vessels 
had outstript the rest of the transports and only carried artillery. 
Thus the town of Menda, deprived of the defenders she was 
expecting, and which the sight of the English vessels had 
seemed to assure, was surrounded by the French troops almost 
without striking a blow. The inhabitants, seized with terror, 
offered to surrender at discretion. Then followed one of those 
instances of devotion not rare in the Peninsula. The assassins 
of the French, foreseeing, from the cruelty of the General, that 
Menda would probably be given over to the flames and the 
whole population put to the sword, offered to denounce them- 
selves. The General accepted this offer, inserting as a condi- 
tion, that the inhabitants of the castle, from the lowest valet to 
the Marques himself, should be placed in his hands. This 
capitulation agreed upon, the General promised to pardon the 
rest of the population and to prevent his soldiers from pillaging 
or setting fire to the town. An enormous contribution was 
exacted, and the richest inhabitants gave themselves up as 
hostages to guarantee the payment, which was to be accom- 
plished within twenty-four hours. 

The General took all precautions necessary for the safety of 
his troops, provided for the defence of the country, and refused 
to lodge his men in the houses. After having formed a camp, 
he went up and took military possession of the castle. The 
members of the family of Leganes and the servants were 
gagged, and shut up in the great hall where the ball had taken 
place, and closely watched. The windows of the apartment 
afforded a full view of the terrace which commanded the town. 
The staff was established in a neighbouring gallery, and the 


DOOMED TO LIVE. 


* 3 * 

General proceeded at once to hold a council of war on the 
measures to be taken for opposing the debarkation. After 
having despatched an aide-de-camp to Marshal Ney, with 
orders to plant batteries along the coast, the General and his 
staff turned their attention to the prisoners. Two hundred 
Spaniards, whom the inhabitants had surrendered, were shot 
down then and there upon the terrace. After this military 
execution the General ordered as many gallows to be erected on 
the terrace as there were prisoners in the hall of the castle, and 
the town executioner to be brought. Victor Marchand made 
use of the time from then until dinner to go and visit the 
prisoners. He soon returned to the General. 

“ I have come,” said he, in a voice broken with emotion, “ to 
ask you a favour.” 

“You?” said the General, in a tone of bitter irony. 

“Alas !” replied Victor, “ it is but a melancholy errand that 1 
am come on. The Marques has seen the gallows being erected, 
and expresses a hope that you will change the mode of 
execution for his family ; he entreats you to have the nobles 
beheaded.” 

“ So be it ! ” said the General. 

“ They further ask you to allow them the last consolations of 
religion, and to take off their bonds ; they promise not to 
attempt to escape.” 

“ I consent,” said the General; “but you must be answerable 
for them.” 

“ The old man also offers you the whole of his fortune if you 
will pardon his young son.” 

“ Really ! ” said the General. “ His goods already belong to 
King Joseph ; he is under arrest.” His brow contracted scorn- 
fully, then he added : “ I will go beyond what they ask. I 
understand now the importance of the last request. Well, let 


132 


BALZAC. 


him buy the eternity of his name, but Spain shall remember for 
ever his treachery and its punishment. I give up the fortune 
and his life to whichever of his sons will fulfil the office of 
executioner. Go, and do not speak to me of it again.” 

Dinner was ready, and the officers sat down to table to 
satisfy appetites sharpened by fatigue. 

One of them only, Victor Marchand, was not present at the 
banquet. He hesitated for a long time before he entered the 
room. The haughty family of Leganes were in their agony. 
He glanced sadly at the scene before him ; in this very room, 
only the night before, he had watched the fair heads of those 
two young girls and those three youths as they circled in the 
excitement of the dance. He shuddered when he thought how 
soon they must fall, struck off by the sword of the headsman. 
Fastened to their gilded chairs, the father and mother, their 
three sons, and their two young daughters, sat absolutely 
motionless. Fight serving-men stood upright before them, 
their hands bound behind their backs. These fifteen persons 
looked at each other gravely, their eyes scarcely betraying the 
thoughts that surged within them. Only profound resignation 
and regret for the failure of their enterprise left any mark upon 
the features of some of them. The soldiers stood likewise 
motionless, looking at them, and respecting the affliction of 
their cruel enemies. An expression of curiosity lit up their 
faces when Victor appeared. He gave the order to unbind the 
condemned, and went himself to loose the cords which .fastened 
Clara to her chair. She smiled sadly. He could not refrain 
from touching her arm, and looking with admiring eyes at her 
black locks and graceful figure. She was a true Spaniard ; she 
had the Spanish complexion and the Spanish eyes, with their 
long curled lashes and pupils blacker than the raven’s wing. 

“Have you been successful?” she said, smiling upon him 


DOOMED TO LIVE. 133 

mournfully with somewhat of the charm of girlhood still linger- 
ing in her eyes. 

Victor could not suppress a groan. He looked one after the 
other at Clara and her three brothers. One, the eldest, was 
aged thirty; he was small, even somewhat ill made, with a 
proud disdainful look, but there was a certain nobleness in 
his bearing ; he seemed no stranger to that delicacy of feeling 
which elsewhere has rendered the chivalry of Spain so famous. 
His name was Juanito. The second, Felipe, was aged about 
twenty ; he was like Clara. The youngest was eight, Manuel ; 
a painter would have found in his features a trace of that 
Roman steadfastness which David has given to children’s 
faces in his episodes of the Republic. The old Marques, his 
head still covered with white locks, seemed to have come forth 
from a picture of Murillo. The young officer shook his head. 
When he looked at them, he was hopeless that he would ever 
see the bargain proposed by the General accepted by either of 
the four ; nevertheless he ventured to impart it to Clara. At 
first she shuddered, Spaniard though she was ; then, imme- 
diately recovering her calm demeanour, she went and knelt 
down before her father. 

“Father,” she said, “make Juanito swear to obey faithfully 
any orders that you give him, and we shall be content.” 

The Marquesa trembled with hope ; but when she leant 
towards her husband, and heard — she who was a mother — the 
horrible confidence whispered by Clara, she swooned away. 
Juanito understood all ; he leapt up like a lion in its cage. After 
obtaining an assurance of perfect submission from the Marques, 
Victor took upon himself to send away the soldiers. The 
servants were led out, handed over to the executioner, and 
hanged. When the family had no guard but Victor to watch 
them, the old father rose and said, “Juanito.” 


i34 


BALZAC. 


Juanito made no answer, except by a movement of the head, 
equivalent to a refusal ; then he fell back in his seat, and stared 
at his parents with eyes dry and terrible to look upon. Clara 
went and sat on his knee, put her arm round his neck, and 
kissed his eyelids. 

“ My dear Juanito,” she said gaily, “if thou didst only know 
how sweet death would be to me if it were given by thee, I 
should not have to endure the odious touch of the headsman’s 
hands. Thou wilt cure me of the woes that were in store for 
me— and, dear Juanito, thou couldst not bear to see me belong 

to another, well •” Her soft eyes cast one look of fire at 

Victor, as if to awaken in Juanito’s heart his horror of the 
F rench. 

“ Have courage,” said his brother Felipe, “or else our race, 
that has almost given kings to Spain, will be extinct.” 

Suddenly Clara rose, the group which had formed round 
Juanito separated, and this son, dutiful in his disobedience, saw 
his aged father standing before him, and heard him cry in a 
solemn voice, “Juanito, I command thee.” 

The young Count remained motionless. His father fell on 
his knees before him ; Clara, Manuel, and Felipe did the same 
instinctively. They all stretched out their hands to him as to 
one who was to save their family from oblivion ; they seemed 
to repeat their father’s words — “ My son, hast thou lost the 
energy, the true chivalry of Spain ? How long wilt thou leave 
thy father on his knees ? What right hast thou to think of 
thine own life and its suffering ? Madam, is this a son of 
mine ?” continued the old man, turning to his wife. 

“ He consents,” cried she in despair. She saw a movement 
in Juanito’s eyelids, and she alone understood its meaning. 

Mariquita, the second daughter, still knelt on her knees, and 
clasped her mother in her fragile arms ; her little brother 


DOOMED TO LIVE. 


*35 

Manuel, seeing her weeping hot tears, began to chide her. At 
this moment the almoner of the castle came in ; he was imme- 
diately surrounded by the rest of the family and brought to 
Juanito. Victor could bear this scene no longer; he made a 
sign to Clara, and hastened away to make one last effort with 
the General. He found him in high good-humour in the 
middle of the banquet drinking with his officers ; they were 
beginning to make merry. 

An hour later a hundred of the principal inhabitants of 
Menda came up to the terrace, in obedience to the General’s 
orders, to witness the execution of the family of Leganes. A 
detachment of soldiers was drawn up to keep back these 
Spanish burghers who were ranged under the gallows on which 
the servants of the Marques still hung. The feet of these mar- 
tyrs almost touched their heads. Thirty yards from them a 
block had been set up, and by it gleamed a scimitar. The 
headsman also was present, in case of Juanito’s refusal. Pre- 
sently, in the midst of the profoundest silence, the Spaniards 
heard the footsteps of several persons approaching, the mea- 
sured tread of a company of soldiers, and the faint clinking 
of their muskets. These diverse sounds were mingled with 
the merriment of the officers’ banquet ; just as before it was 
the music of the dance which had concealed preparations for a 
treacherous massacre. All eyes were turned towards the 
castle ; the noble family was seen advancing with incredible 
dignity. Every face was calm and serene ; one man only 
leant, pale and haggard, on the arm of the Priest. Upon this 
man he lavished all the consolations of religion— upon the only 
one of them doomed to live. The executioner understood, as 
did all the rest, that for that day Juanito had undertaken the 
office himself. The aged Marques and his wife, Clara, 
Mariquita, and their two brothers, came and knelt down a 


136 


BALZAC. 


few steps from the fatal spot. Juanito was led thither by the 
Priest. As he approached the block the executioner touched 
him by the sleeve and drew him aside, probably to give him 
certain instructions. 

The Confessor placed the victims in such a position that 
they could not see the executioner ; but like true Spaniards, 
they knelt erect without a sign of emotion. 

Clara was the first to spring forward to her brother. 
“Juanito,” she said, “have pity on my faint-heartedness; 
begin with me.” 

At that moment they heard the footsteps of a man running 
at full speed, and Victor arrived on the tragic scene. Clara 
was already on her knees, already her white neck seemed to 
invite the edge of the scimitar. A deadly pallor fell upon the 
officer, but he still found strength to run on. 

“The General grants thee thy life if thou wilt marry me,” he 
said to her in a low voice. 

The Spaniard cast a look of proud disdain on the officer. 
“Strike, Juanito,” she said, in a voice of profound mean- 
ing. 

Her head rolled at Victor’s feet. When the Marquesa heard 
the sound a convulsive start escaped her ; this was the only 
sign of her affliction. 

“Am I placed right so, dear Juanito?” little Manuel asked 
his brother. 

“Ah, thou weepest, Mariquita!” said Juanito to his sister. 

“ Yes,” answered the girl ; “ I was thinking of thee, my poor 
Juanito ; thou wilt be so unhappy without us.” 

At length the noble figure of the Marques appeared. He 
looked at the blood of his children ; then he turned to the 
spectators, who stood mute and motionless before him. He 
stretched out his hands to Juanito, and said in a firm voice: 


DOOMED TO LIVE, 137 

“Spaniards, I give my son a father’s blessing. Now, Marques , 
strike without fear, as thou art without fault.” 

But when Juanito saw his mother approach, supported by 
the Confessor, he groaned aloud, “ She fed me at her own 
breast.” His cry seemed to tear a shout of horror from the 
lips of the crowd. At this terrible sound the noise of the ban- 
quet and the laughter and merry-making of the officers died 
away. The Marquesa comprehended that Juanito’s courage 
was exhausted. With one leap she had thrown herself over the 
balustrade, and her head was dashed to pieces against the 
rocks below. A shout of admiration burst forth. Juanito fell 
to the ground in a swoon. 

“ Marchand has just been telling me something about this 
execution,” said a half-drunken officer. “ I’ll warrant, General, 
it wasn’t by your orders that ” 

“ Have you forgotten, Messieurs,” cried General Gautier, 
“that during the next month there will be five hundred French 
families in tears, and that we are in Spain ? Do you wish to 
leave your bones here ?” 

After this speech there was not a man, not even a sub- 
lieutenant, who dared to empty his glass. 

In spite of the respect with which he is surrounded — in spite 
of the title of El Verdugo (the executioner), bestowed upon him 
as a title of nobility by the King of Spain — the Marques de 
Leganes is a prey to melancholy. He lives in solitude, and is 
rarely seen. Overwhelmed with the load of his glorious crime, 
he seems only to await the birth of a second son, impatient to 
seek again the company of those Shades who are about his 
path continually. 


W. W. 


AN ACCURSED HOUSE. 

(A Story related by Horace Bianchonl) 

On the banks of the Loire, about a stone’s throw from 
Vendôme, stands an old brown house, with a very steep roof. 
Even the stinking tan-yards and the wretched taverns found 
on the outskirts of almost all small towns have no place here; 
the isolation is complete. At the back of this dwelling, leading 
down to the bank of the river, is a garden. The box, once 
clipped to mark the walks, grows now as it will ; some willows 
sprung from the Loire have formed a boundary with their rapid 
growth, and almost hide the house ; plants which we call weeds 
make the sloping bank beautiful with their luxuriant growth ; 
the fruit trees, unpruned for ten years, form a thicket with their 
suckers, and yield no harvest ; the espaliers have grown as 
bushy as a hedge of elms ; paths once sanded are covered 
with purslain— or rather, of the paths themselves there is left 
no trace. From the brow of the hill hang, as it were, the ruins 
of the ancient castle of the Dukes of Vendôme ; it is the only 
place whence the eye can penetrate into this retreat. 

It is said that this strip of land was once — at a date difficult 
to fix exactly — the delight of a gentleman who spent his time 
in the cultivation of roses and tulips ; in fact, in horticulture 
generally, especially devoting himself to the rarer fruits. 
An arbour — or rather, the ruins of one — is still visible, and in 
it a table which time has not yet entirely destroyed. The 


AN ACCURSED HOUSE. 


139 


sight of this garden which is no more, reminds one of the 
negative enjoyment of life spent peacefully in the country, 
just as one guesses at the story of a successful merchant from 
the epitaph on his tomb. To complete the sad and sweet 
thoughts which fasten here upon the soul, one of the walls 
bears a sun-dial inscribed with this legend, “Ultimam^ 
cogita” — such is the reminder of its somewhat matter-of-fact 
Christianity. The roofs of this house are utterly ruinous, the 
shutters are always closed, the balconies full of swallows’ nests, 
the doors for ever shut ; tall grasses etch with their green 
outline the cracks in the pavement, the bolts are red with 
rust. Summer and winter the sun and the moon and the 
snow have cracked the wood and shrunk the planks and 
gnawed away the paint. Here silence and gloom hold their 
untroubled sway, only birds, and cats, and rats, and mice, and 
martins roam here unmolested, and fight their battles, and prey 
upon each other. Over all an invisible hand has written the 
one word — Mystery. 

If you were driven by your curiosity to go round and look 
at the house on the other side, from the road, you would notice a 
wide-arched door, through which the children of the neighbour- 
hood have made plenty of peep-holes — I learnt afterwards that 
this door had been past repair ten years before — and through 
these irregular chinks you could see the perfect harmony there 
is between the garden front and the front looking on to the 
courtyard. Here is the same reign of disorder — the flag- 
stones are edged with tufts of grass, enormous cracks run 
like furrows over the walls, the blackened coping is inter- 
laced with festoons of countless wall plants, the stones of 
the steps are unjointed, the gutters are broken, the cord of 
the bell has rotted away. Has fire from heaven passed through 
this dwelling? Did some tribunal decree that this habitation 


140 


BALZAC. 


should be sown with salt? Has man betrayed France in this 
place — insulted God ? These are the questions one asks here ; 
only the reptiles writhe and answer not. This empty, desolate 
house is a vast enigma, and no man knows the clue. It was 
formerly a small manor, and bears the name of La Grande 
Brétèche. During my stay at Vendôme, where Despleins had 
left me to take care of a rich patient, the sight of this strange 
dwelling became one of my keenest pleasures. It was more 
than a ruin ; to a ruin are attached at least some remembrances 
of incontestable authenticity ; but this habitation, still standing, 
slowly decaying beneath an avenging hand, held within it a 
secret — a thought unknown. At the least its mere existence 
was the sign of some strange caprice. Many a time of an 
evening I resolutely approached the now wild hedge-row which 
protected the enclosure. I braved the tearing thorns, and 
trod this garden without an owner, and entered this possession 
no longer public or private. I stayed there whole hours gazing 
upon its disorder. Not even for the sake of learning the story 
— which I felt certain would give an explanation of this strange 
scene — would I have made a single inquiry of any of the gossips 
of Vendôme. There I composed charming romances ; I gave 
myself up to little debauches of melancholy which delighted my 
heart. If I had known the cause of this desertion (perhaps a 
commonplace story enough), I should have lost the intoxication 
of these my unpublished poems. To me this retreat repre- 
sented the most varied pictures of human life clouded by 
misery. Now it had the air of a cloister without inmates ; now 
the peace of a cemetery without the dead and all their chatter- 
ing epitaphs ; one day it was a lazar-house, the next the Palace 
of the Atridae ; but above all it was the country with its hour- 
glass existence, and its conventional ideas. I have often wept, 
I never laughed there. More than once I felt an involuntary 


AN ACCURSED HOUSE. 


141 

terror when I heard above my head the dull whirr of the wings 
of some belated wood-dove. There the soil is so dank you 
must defy the lizards and vipers and frogs that walk abroad in 
all the wild liberty of Nature. Above all, you must not mind 
the cold ; at certain moments you feel as though a mantle ot 
ice were cast upon your shoulders, like the commandant’s hand 
upon Don Juan’s neck. 

One evening, just at the moment I was finishing a tragedy by 
which I was explaining to myself the phenomenon of this sort 
of woe in effigy, the wind turned an old rusty weathercock, and 
the cry it gave forth sounded like a groan bursting from the 
depth of the house ; I shivered with terror. 

I returned to my inn overpowered with gloomy thoughts. 
When I had supped, my hostess came with a mysterious air 
into my room and said, “ Monsieur, Monsieur Régnault is here.” 
“Who is Monsieur Régnault?” “Why! does not Monsieur 
know Monsieur Régnault ? Ah, that’s very odd,” she said, and 
went away. Suddenly I saw before me a long lean man ; he 
entered the room like a ram gathering itself up to butt at a 
rival ; he presented a receding forehead, a little pointed head, 
and a sallow face, not unlike a glass of dirty water ; he might 
have passed for a ministerial beadle. This man, who was quite 
unknown to me, wore a black coat, very much worn at the 
seams, but he had a diamond in the bosom of his shirt and 
gold rings in his ears. 

“ Monsieur, whom have I the honour of addressing ?” said 
I. He seated himself on a chair, arranged himself before 
my fire, placed his hat on my table, rubbed his hands together 
and said, “Ah! it’s very cold. Monsieur, I am Monsieur 
Régnault.” I bowed, saying to myself, “ II bondo cani ! let’s 
see.” 

“ I am,” said he, “ a notary in Vendôme.” “ I am charmed 


142 


BALZAC \ 


to hear it, Monsieur,” said I, “ but I am not in a position to 
make a will, for reasons known to myself.” “Just one 
moment !” he replied, raising his hand as if to impose silence. 

“ Allow me, Monsieur, allow me ! I learn that you have 
occasionally gone to walk in the garden of La Grande 
Brétèche.” “Yes, Monsieur.” “Just one moment!” said he, 
repeating his gesture; “this of itself constitutes an action- 
able offence. Monsieur, I am come in the name and as 
executor under the will of Madame, the late Comtesse 
de Merret, to request you to discontinue your visits. Just 
one moment ! I am no Turk ; I do not wish to make a 
crime of it ; besides, you may very well be ignorant of the circum- 
stances which oblige me to allow the finest mansion in Vendôme 
to fall into ruins. However, Monsieur, you appear to be a man 
of education, and you ought to know that the laws forbid 
trespass on an enclosed estate under heavy penalties. A hedge 
is as good as a wall. However, the state in which the house 
now stands may serve as an excuse for your curiosity. Nothing 
would give me more pleasure than to leave you free to come 
and go as you please in the house ; but, charged as I am to 
carry out the wishes of the testatrix, I have the honour, 
Monsieur, to request you not to enter that garden again. 
Monsieur, since the opening of the will I have not myself set 
foot in that house, though it belongs — as I had the honour of 
informing you — to the estate of Madame de Merret. All we 
did was to make an inventory of the doors and windows, in 
order to assess the taxes, which I pay annually out of capital 
destined by the late Madame la Comtesse for that purpose. 
Ah, my dear Monsieur, her will made a great talk in Vendôme!” 

Here the worthy man stopped to blow his nose. I respected 
his loquacity, understanding perfectly that the estate of Madame 
de Merret was the most important event in his life— his whole 


AN ACCURSED HOUSE. 


143 


reputation, his glory, his restoration. Then, after all, I must 
say good-bye to my fine reveries and romances. However, I did 
not rebel against the satisfaction of learning the truth in an 
official manner. 

“ Monsieur,” I said, “ would it be indiscreet if I asked you 
the reason for this eccentricity?” 

At these words a look expressing all the pleasure of a man 
accustomed to mounting his hobby, passed over the notary’s 
face. He pulled up his shirt collar with a sort of self-satisfied 
air, took out his snuff-box, opened it, offered me some snuff, and 
on my refusal seized a large pinch himself. He was happy 1 
The man who has not got a hobby knows nothing of the profit 
one can get out of life. A hobby is the exact mean between 
passion and monomania. At this moment I understood that 
charming expression of Sterne’s in all its meaning. I had a 
complete idea of the joy with which, by the aid of Trim , UncU 
Toby bestrode his charger. 

“ Monsieur,” said Monsieur Régnault, “ I was formerly senior 
clerk to Maître Roguin, in Paris — an excellent office. Perhaps 
you have heard speak of it? No! Well, a most unfortunate 
bankruptcy rendered it notorious. Not having sufficient 
capital to carry on business in Paris, considering the price to 
which practices went up in 1816, I came here and purchased 
the office of my predecessor. I had relations here in Vendôme, 
among others a very rich aunt who gave me her daughter in 
marriage. Monsieur,” he continued after a slight pause, 
“ three months after I had been enrolled before Monseigneur 
le Garde des sceaux, I was summoned one night just as I was 
going to bed (this was before my marriage) by Madame la 
Comtesse de Merret to her château , le Château de Merret. 
Her lady’s-maid, a fine young woman, now servant in this hotel 
was at my door in Madame la Comtesse’s caliche. Ah ! just 


144 


BALZAC : 


one moment ! I ought to have told you, Monsieur, that 
Monsieur h Comte de Merret had gone to Paris, and died there 
two months before I came here. He died miserably, having 
given himself up to every kind of excess. You understand ? 
The day of his departure Madame la Comtesse had left La 
Grande Brétèche and had it dismantled. Some people even 
declare that she burnt all the furniture, hangings — in short all 
the goods and chattels generally whatsoever adorning the 
‘premises now in the tenancy of the said sieur — (Dear me, what 
am I saying ? Beg pardon, I was thinking I was drawing up a 
lease.) Yes,” he repeated, “they say she had them burnt in 
the meadow at Merret. Have you been to Merret, Monsieur? 
No,” said he, answering the question himself. “ Ah ! it’s a very 
fine place ! For about three months before, Monsieur le Comte 
and Madame la Comtesse had been living in a strange manner. 
They no longer received any one ; Madame lived on the ground 
floor and Monsieur on the first storey. After Madame la 
Comtesse was left alone, she never showed herself again, 
except at church ; later she refused to see her friends who 
came to visit her at home in her château. She was already 
very much changed when she left La Grande Brétèche and 
went to live at Merret. The dear woman (I say ‘ dear ’ because 
this diamond comes to me from her, otherwise I never saw her 
but once.) Well, the good lady was very ilL No doubt she 
had given up all hope of recovery, for she died without 
wishing any doctors to be calted in ; indeed, many of our ladies 
here thought that she was not quite right in the head. As you 
may imagine then, Monsieur, my curiosity was especially 
excited when I was informed that Madame de Merret needed 
my assistance — and I was not the only person who took 
interest in this story. 

“Although it was late, the whole town knew that same evening 


AN ACC UR r ED HOUSE . 


MS 


that I had gone to Merret. On the road I addressed a few 
questions to the lady’s-maid, but her answers were very vague ; 
however, she told me that the curé of Merret had come during 
the day and administered the Last Sacraments to her mistress, 
and that it seemed impossible that she could live through the 
night. I arrived at the château about eleven o’clock. I went 
up the great staircase, then, after traversing vast, gloomy apart- 
ments, cold and damp enough for the devil, I reached the 
principal bed-chamber, where Madame la Comtesse lay. After 
all the reports that had been going about (I should never 
have finished, Monsieur, if I were to repeat all the stories that 
are told about her), I expected to see a sort of coquette. 
Just fancy, I had the greatest difficulty to discover at all 
where she was, in the great bed in which she lay. True, 
she had one of those antique Argant lamps for light, but 
the chamber was enormous, with an ancien régime frise so 
covered with dust that the very sight of it made one cough. 
Ah ! but you’ve not been to Merret ! Well ! Monsieur, the 
bed is one of those old-fashioned ones, with a high canopy 
trimmed with figured chintz. A small night table stood by the 
bedside, and I noticed on it a Following of Christ , which, 
by the way, I afterwards bought for my wife, as well as the 
lamp; there was also a large couch for her confidential servant, 
and two chairs. No fire, mind! This was all the furniture; 
it wouldn’t have filled ten lines of an inventory. Ah, 7non cher 
Monsieur , if you had seen, as I did then, this vast room, hung 
with brown, you would have fancied you had been transposed 
into a scene of a romance come true. It was icy, more than 
icy — funereal,” he added, raising his arm with a theatrical 
gesture and pausing. “After looking for some time and going 
close up to the bed, at last I discovered Madame de Merret, 
thanks again to the lamplight which fell full upon her pillows. 

849 


146 


* BALZAC. 


Her face was as yellow as wax ; it was just like a pair of 
clasped hands. She had on a lace cap which showed her 
beautiful hair; then, it was as white as thread. She was 
sitting up, though she seemed to do so with great difficulty. 
Her great black eyes, dulled with fever no doubt, and already 
almost dead, scarcely moved under the bones where the eye- 
brows are — here!” said he, pointing to the arch of his eyes. 

“ Her brow was wet, her hands were fleshless, mere bones 
covered with a fine, tender skin ; all her veins and muscles 
stood out prominently She must have been very beautiful 
once, but at the moment I was seized with a feeling — I don’t 
know how — at the sight of her. The people who laid her 
out said that they had never seen a creature so utterly fleshless 
alive. She really was terrible to behold ! Disease had made 
such ravages upon her she was nothing more than a phantom. 
Her lips were a livid purple ; they seemed motionless even 
when she spoke. Although my profession takes me now and 
again to the bedsides of the dying in order to ascertain their 
last wishes, so that I am not unfamiliar with these scenes, 
yet I must say that the lamentations of the families and the 
agonies of the dying which I have witnessed are as nothing 
compared to this desolate and silent woman in her vast 
château. I could not hear the faintest sound, I could not 
even see the least movement of the bed-clothes from the 
breathing of the sick woman ; I too stood perfectly motionless, 
absorbed in looking at her, in a sort of stupor. I could fancy 
I was there now. At last her great eyes moved ; she tried to 
lift her right hand, but it fell back on the bed, and these 
words passed out of her mouth like a sigh — her voice was a 
voice no more — ‘ I have waited very impatiently for you.’ 
Her cheeks flushed feverishly. It was a struggle for her to 
speak. ‘ Madame,’ I said. She made me a sign to be silent, 


AN ACCURSED HOUSE. 


147 


and at the same moment the old housekeeper rose from her 
couch and whispered in my ear: ‘Do not speak; Madame la 
Comtesse is not in a state to bear the least sound ; if you spoke 
you might agitate her.’ I sat down. After a few moments 
Madame de Merret gathered up all her remaining strength and 
moved her right arm ; she put it with immense difficulty under 
her bolster ; then she paused for a moment ; then she made 
one last effort to draw out her hand ; she took out a sealed 
paper, and as she did so the sweat fell in drops from her 
forehead. ‘I entrust my will to you,’ she said. ‘Ah, my 
God, ah !’ This was all. She seized a crucifix which layon 
her bed, raised it quickly to her lips, and died. The expres- 
sion of those motionless eyes makes me shudder still ; she 
must have suffered terribly ! There was joy in her last look, 
and the joy remained graven upon her dead eyes. I took 
away the will with me ; when it was opened I found that 
Madame de Merret had named me her executor. She be- 
queathed the whole of her property to the hospital at Vendôme, 
with the exception of a few individual legacies. Her directions 
relatively to La Grande Brétèche were as follows She directed 
me to leave the house for a period of fifty years— reckoned 
from the day of her death — in the exact state in which it 
should be found at the moment of her decease ; she forbade 
any entry into the apartments by any person whatsoever, and 
also the least repair; she even set aside the interest of a 
certain sum wherewith, if necessary, to engage keepers, in 
order to insure the fulfilment of her intentions in their entirety. 
At the expiration of this term of years, if the wishes of the 
testatrix have been carried out, the house is to pass to my 
heirs, for Monsieur is aware that notaries are not allowed to 
accept a legacy; if they are not carried out, La Grande 
Brétèche returns to the heirs-at-law, with the charge that they 


148 


BALZAC. 


are to fulfil the conditions indicated in the codicil annexed 
to the will, which codicil is not to be opened until the 
expiration of the said fifty years. The will has never been 

disputed, and so at this word, and without finishing 

his sentence, that oblong notary surveyed me with an air 
of triumph, and I made him quite happy by addressing him a 
few compliments. “Monsieur,” I finished by saying to him, 
“you have made such a vivid impression upon me that I fancy 
I can see this dying woman paler than her own sheets ; her 
gleaming eyes make me afraid ; I shall dream of her to-night. 
But you will have formed some conjectures concerning the 
dispositions contained in this eccentric will?” “Monsieur,” 
said he, with comic reserve, “ I never allow myself to judge of 
the conduct of persons who have honoured me with the gift of 
a diamond.” I soon untied the tongue of the scrupulous 
notary, and he communicated to me, amid long digressions, all 
the observations made by the profound politicians of both 
sexes whose judgments are law in Vendôme. But these 
observations were so contradictory and so diffuse, that, in spite 
of the interest which I took in this authentic history, I very 
nearly fell asleep. The notary, no doubt accustomed to listen 
himself, and to make his clients and fellow-townsmen listen too, 
to his dull voice and monotonous intonation, ^Degan to triumph 
over my curiosity, when happily he got up to leave. “ Ha, ha, 
Monsieur,” said he, upon the staircase, “ there are many people 
who would like to be alive in forty-five years’ time, but — just 1 
one moment !” and he put the first finger of his right hand to 
his nose, as if to say, “ Pay great attention to this,” and said, in 
a sly way, “To get as far as that, one must start before sixty.” 

I was drawn from my apathy by the last sally — the notary 
thought it prodigiously witty ; then I shut my door, sat down 
in my arm-chair, and put my feet on the fire dogs of the grate. 


AN ACCURSED HOUSE. 


149 


I was soon deep in a romance à la Anne Radcliffe, founded on 
the juridical hints given by Monsieur Régnault. Presently my 
door, handled by the dexterous hand of a woman, turned on its 
hinges ; my hostess came in, a good-humoured, jovial woman, 
who had missed her vocation ; she was a Fleming, and ought to 
have been born in a picture by Teniers. “ Well, Monsieur,” 
said she, “I suppose Monsieur Régnault has been droning over 
his old story again about La Grande Brétèche?” “Yes, he 
has mère Lepas.” “What has he been telling you?” I 
repeated to her in a few words the gloomy, chilling story of 
Madame de Merret. After each sentence my hostess stretched 
out her neck and looked at me with an innkeeper’s own shrewd- 
ness — a sort of happy mean between the instinct of a 
gendarme, the cra r t of a spy, and the shiftiness of a shopkeeper. 
When I had finished I added, “ My dear dajne Lepas ! you 
seem to me to know something more about it yourself, or else 
why should you have come up to see me?” “ No, on my word 
of honour ! as sure as my name’s Lepas.” “No, don’t swear to 
it ; your eyes are big with a secret. You knew Monsieur 
Merret; what was he like?” “Lord bless you, Monsieur de 
Merret was a fine man ; you never got to the end of him, he was 
so long— a worthy gentleman come from Picardie, but, as we 
say here, 1 II avait la tête fires du bonetl He paid 
everything ready money, so that he might never come to 
words with any one ; you see he was a bit quick ! Our 
ladies here all thought him very nice and pleasant.” “ Because 
he was quick?” said I. “Likely enough,” said she. “You 
may imagine, Monsieur, there must have been a something 
about him, as they say, for Madame de Merret to have married 
him. I don’t want to hurt the other ladies, but she was the 
richest and prettiest young lady in all Vendôme ; she had near 
on twenty thousand livres a year. The whole town went to 


BALZAC . 


150 

see the wedding. The bride was a delicate, winning creature 
— a real jewel of a wife. Ah ! they made a fine couple in their 
time!” “Were they happy together?” “ Hm ! perhaps they 
were and perhaps they weren’t, as far as one could tell ; but 
you can imagine they didn’t hob-nob with such as we. 
Madame de Merret made a good wife, and very kind. I 
dare say she had a good bit to put up with at times from her 
husband’s tantrums ; but though he was a bit stern, we liked 
him well enough. Bah ! it’s his quality that made him like 

that; when a man’s noble, you know ” “Then there must 

certainly have been some catastrophe for Monsieur and Madame 
de Merret to have separated so abruptly?” “ I never said any- 
thing about a catastrophe, Monsieur. I don’t know anything 
about it.” “All right! Now I am certain that you do know 
about it.” “ Well, Monsieur, I am going to tell you all I know. 
When I saw Monsieur Régnault go up to see you, I felt certain 
that he would talk to you about Madame de Merret, with reference 
to La Grande Brétèche. This put it into my head to consult 
Monsieur, for you seemed to me to be a comfortable man, who 
would not betray a poor woman like me that has never done 
harm to any one, — and yet find myself tormented by my con- 
science. I have never up to now dared to open my mouth 
about it to the people in this place ; they’re all a pack of 
gossips, with tongues like vinegar. In fact, Monsieur, I have 
never yet had a traveller stay in my house as long as you 
have, or any one to whom I could tell the history of the fifty 

thousand francs ” “ My dear dame Lepas,” I answered, 

checking the flow of her words, “ if your confidence is of a 
nature to compromise me I wouldn’t be burdened with it for 
all the world.” “You needn’t be afraid,” said she, interrupting 
me, “ you will see.” This readiness made me think that I 
was not the only person to whom our good hostess had com- 


AN ACCURSED HOUSE. 


151 

municated the secret of which I was to be the sole depository ; 
however, I settled myself to listen. “ Monsieur,” said she, 
“ when the Emperor sent some Spanish prisoners here — 
prisoners of war or others — I had one to lodge at the expense 
of the Government, a young Spaniard sent to Vendôme on 
parole. In spite of his parole, he had to go every day to 
report himself to th? sub-prefect. He was a Spanish grandee 
— excuse me a minute — he bore a name ending in ‘os’ and 
‘dia.’ I think it was Bagos de Feredia, but I wrote it down 
in my register ; if you would like to, you can read it. Ah ! he 
was a handsome young man for a Spaniard, who are all ugly — 
so they say. He couldn’t have been more than five feet two 
or three inches, but he was well made. He had the smallest 
hands ! — which he took such care of — you should have seen — 
he had as many brushes for his hands as a woman has for 
the whole of her toilet. He had long black hair, gleaming 
eyes, rather an olive complexion — but I admired that. He 
wore the finest linen I ever saw on any one — and I have had 
princesses to lodge here, and among others le Général Bertrand, 
le Duc and la Duchesse d’Albrantês, Monsieur Decazes, and 
the King of Spain. He did not eat much; but one couldn’t 
be angry with him, he had such gentle, courteous manners. 
Oh ! I was very fond of him, although he didn’t say two words 
in the day; and one couldn’t get the least conversation with 
him. If one tried to talk to him, he didn’t answer. It was a 
fad — a mania ; they’re all like it, so I’m told. He read his 
breviary like a priest ; he went regularly to mass and to all 
the offices; and where do you think he knelt ?— (we noticed 
this afterwards) — why, not two steps from Madame de Merret’s 
chapel. As he took his seat there ever since the first time 
he went into the church, no one imagined there could be 
anything in it ; besides, the poor young man never raised his 


152 


BALZAC. 


nose out of his book of prayers. Then, Monsieur, in the 
evening he used to walk on the hill in the ruins of the castle. 
It was his only amusement, poor man ; it must have reminded 
him of his own country — Spain is nothing but mountains, so 
I’ve heard. From the first days of his detention he was 
always late at night. I was anxious, when I saw he didn’t 
come in until just on the stroke of midnight ; but we all got 
accustomed to his fancies. He took the key of the door, and 
we didn’t sit up for him any longer. He lodged in the house we 
have in la rue des Casernes. Then one of our stable-boys told 
us that one evening when he was going to wash the horses, 
he believed he had seen the Spanish grandee swimming like 
a fish some distance off in the river. When he came back 
I warned him to mind the weeds. He seemed annoyed at 
having been seen in the water. At last, Monsieur, one day, 
or rather one morning, we found he was not in his bedroom ; 
he had not returned. After hunting about everywhere, I saw 
some writing in the drawer of his table, and with it fifty of 
the Spanish gold pieces they call portugais, equal to about 
fifty thousand francs ; and afterwards in a little sealed box 
some diamonds, worth about ten thousand francs. Well, this 
writing said that in case he did not come back he left us 
the money and the diamonds, and charged us to have 
masses said to thank God for J^iis escape and his safety. 
At that time I still had my husband with me, and he ran 
out to search for him. Now comes the oddest part of the 
story. He brought back the Spaniard’s clothes, which he had 
found under a large stone in a sort of palisade on the 
bank of the river, on the château side, almost opposite La 
Grande Brétèche. My husband had got there so early that 
no one had seen them. When he had read the letter, he 
burnt the clothes, and we gave out according to Count 


AN A Cl CRIED L OUoE. 


153 


Feredia’s desire that he had escaped. The sub-prefect 
set the whole gendarmerie at his heels ; but, pooh ! they 
never caught him. Lepas believed the Spaniard was drowned ; 
but I don’t, Monsieur. I believe he had something to do 
with that affair of Madame de Merret, seeing that Rosalie 
told me that the crucifix which her mistress was so fond of that 
she had it buried with her, was made of ebony and silver. Now 
during the first days of Monsieur Feredia’s stay here he had a 
crucifix of ebony and silver, which I never saw among his 
things again. Now, Monsieur, you don’t really think I need 
have any remorse about the fifty thousand francs? They really 
are mine ? ” 

“ Certainly. — Then you’ve never tried to question Rosalie,” I 
said. 

“ Haven’t I though, Monsieur; but what am I to do? That 
girl ! she’s — a wall. She knows something, but there’s no 
getting anything out of her.” 

After talking to me for a few minutes more my hostess left 
me, tortured by vague and gloomy thoughts. I felt a romantic 
curiosity, and yet a sort of religious horror, like the profound 
sensation which takes hold of us when we go into a church at 
night. Under the lofty arches we perceive through the gloom 
a far-off flickering light, an uncertain form glides by us, we hear 
the rustle of a gown or a cassock — before we know it, we have 
shuddered. La Grande Brétèche, with its rank weeds, its worn- 
out casements, its rusted ironwork, its deserted chambers, its 
closed portals, rose up suddenly, fantastically before me. I 
would try to penetrate into this mysterious dwelling, by seeking 
for the knot of its solemn history, the drama that had slain 
three human beings. Rosalie was now the most interesting 
person to me in Vendôme. In spite of the glow of health 
which beamed from her chubby face, I discovered, after close 


154 


BALZAC. 


scrutiny, the trace of hidden thoughts. She held within her 
the elements either of hope or remorse ; her behaviour sug- 
gested a secret, like those pious women who pray to excess, or 
a girl who has killed her child and is always hearing its last 
cry. Yet her attitudes were simple and awkward. There was 
nothing criminal in her broad, foolish smile, if only at the 
sight of her sturdy bust, covered with a red and blue check 
kerchief, and enclosed, impressed, and enlaced in a violet and 
white striped gown, you could not have failed to think she was 
innocent. “No,” thought I, “ I shall not leave Vendôme until I 
know the whole history of La Grande Brétèche. I will become 
Rosalie’s lover, if it is absolutely necessary, to gain my end.” 
“Rosalie,” said I one day. “Yes! if you please, Monsieur.” 
“You are not married?” She gave a little start. “ Oh, I 
shan’t want for men, I can tell you, Monsieur, when the whim 
takes me to make a fool of myself,” said she, laughing. 

She quickly recovered from her inward emotion, for every 
woman, from a fine lady to a tavern drudge inclusively, has a 
sang froid especially their own. 

“ You are fresh and attractive enough not to lack lovers ! 
But tell me, Rosalie, how was it you took a place at an inn 
after you had been with Madame de Merret ? Didn’t she 
leave you any pension ?” 

“ Oh yes, Monsieur; but my place is the best in all Vendôme.” 

This was one of those answers which judges and barristers 
call dilatory. It appeared to me, with regard to this romantic 
story, that Rosalie stood on the middle square of the chess- 
board ; she was at the very centre both of the interest and of 
the truth of it ; she seemed to be bound up in the knot. It 
was no ordinary seduction I was attempting ; this girl was like 
the last chapter of a romance. So from this moment Rosalie 
became the object of my predilections. By dint of studying 


AN ACCURSED HOUSE. 


155 


her, I noticed in her — as one does in all the women whom we 
make our chief thought— a number of good qualities. She was 
neat, diligent, pretty — of course that goes without saying ; — in 
fact, she was soon endowed with all the attractions which our 
desire attributes to women, in whatever situation they may be 
placed. A fortnight after the notary’s visit, one evening — no, 
one morning; in fact, it was quite early — I said to Rosalie : 

“ Come, tell me all thou knowest about Madame de Merret!” — 
“ Oh, don’t ask me that, Monsieur Horace,” she answered with 
terror. Her pretty face grew dark, her bright vivid colouring 
faded, and her eyes lost all their soft and innocent lustre. 
“ Well,” she said, “as you wish it, I will tell you ; but whatever 
you do, keep the secret ! ’’ — “ Done 1 my dear child ; I will keep 
all thy secrets with the integrity of a robber, which is the 
loyalest that exists.” — “ If you don’t mind,” said she, “ I had 
rather you kept them with your own.” So she arranged her 
kerchief, and settled herself as one does to tell a tale, for 
certainly an attitude of confidence and security is a necessity in 
story-telling. The best stories are told at a not too early hour, 
and just as we are now, at table. No one ever told a story well, 
standing or fasting. But if it were necessary to reproduce faith- 
fully the diffuse eloquence of Rosalie, a whole volume would 
scarcely be enough. Now, since the event thus confusedly 
related to me bears exactly the same relation to the notary’s 
and Madame Lepas’s gossip, as the mean terms in arithmetical 
proportion bear to the extreme, I have nothing more to do 
than to tell it again in few words ; so I abridge. 

The bedroom which Madame de Merret occupied at la 
Brétèche was situated on the ground floor. In it, sunk in the 
wall, about four feet deep, was a small closet which she used for 
a wardrobe. Three months before the evening when the 
circumstances took place which I am about to relate to you, 


BALZAC. 


i5 6 

Madame de Merret was so seriously indisposed that her 
husband left her to sleep alone in her room, and went himself 
to sleep in a room on the first floor. On this evening, by one 
of those chances impossible to foresee, he came home from his 
club (where he went to read the papers and talk politics with 
me country gentlemen) two hours later than he was accustomed 
to. His wife thought that he had already come in and gone to 
bed, and was asleep. But there had been a rather animated 
discussion on the subject of the invasion of France ; the game 
of billiards too had proved an exciting one, and he had lost forty 
francs. This was an enormous sum at Vendôme where every one 
hoards and morals are kept within bounds of most praise- 
worthy moderation ; perhaps this is the source of that true 
contentment which Parisians do not appreciate. For some 
time Monsieur de Merret had contented himself with inquiring 
from Rosalie whether his wife had gone to bed, and on her 
always answering in the affirmative, he went straight to his own 
room with that simplicity which comes of habit and confidence. 
But that night, when he came in, the fancy took him to go and 
tell his ill luck to Madame de Merret, and also perhaps 
receive her sympathy. Now during dinner he had observed 
that Madame de Merret was very becomingly dressed ; and 
he remarked to himself as he came from his club that his wife’s 
indisposition must have passed off, and that her convalescence 
had made her more beautiful than before. You see he noticed 
this, as husbands do everything, a little late in the day. At 
this moment Rosalie was in the kitchen, engaged in watching 
the cook and the coachman play out a difficult hand at brisque; 
so instead of calling her, Monsieur de Merret placed his lan- 
tern on the bottom step of the stairs, and by its light directed 
his steps towards his wife’s bedroom. His footsteps were easy 
to recognise as they rang in the vaulted corridor. At the 


AN ACCURSED HOUSE. 


157 


moment he turned the handle of his wife’s door, he thought he 
heard the door of the closet I have mentioned shut ; but when 
he came in Madame de Merret was alone, standing before the 
fireplace. Her husband in his simplicity thought to himself 
that it was Rosalie in the wardrobe, but yet a suspicion jangled 
like a chime in his ears, and made him distrustful. He looked 
at his wife ; he saw in her eyes a sort of troubled, fierce 
expression. “You are late to-night,” said she. In her voice, 
before so pure and gracious, there seemed to him to have come 
a subtle change. He made no reply, for at that moment 
Rosalie came in. It was a thunderbolt to him. 

He paced up and down the room, his arms folded, going 
from one window to the other with measured tread. “ Have 
you had bad news, or are you in pain?” she asked timidly, 
while Rosalie undressed her. He kept silence. “You can 
go,” said Madame de Merret to her lady’s-maid ; “ I will put 
in my curl-papers myself.” She divined some evil from the 
very look on her husband’s face, and wished to be alone with 
him. When Rosalie was gone — or ostensibly gone, for she 
waited for some minutes in the corridor— Monsieur de Merret 
came and sat down before his wife, and said coldly, “ Madame, 
there is some one in your wardrobe.” She looked calmly at 
her husband, and said simply, “ No, Monsieur.” This “ No” 
wounded Monsieur de Merret to the quick ; he did not believe 
it, and yet his wife had never seemed to him purer or holier 
than she looked at that moment. He rose and went to open 
the closet. Madame de Merret took his hand and stopped him, 
looked at him with a melancholy air, and said in a. voice of 
extreme emotion, “Remember, if you do not find any one 
there, all will be over between us ! ” The incredible dignity 
stamped upon the figure of his wife restored him to a profound 
sense of esteem for her, and inspired him with one of those 


BALZAC. 


158 

resolves which only need a vaster stage to become immortal. 
“No, Josephine,” said he, “I will not go. In either case we 
should be parted for ever Listen ! I know all the purity of 
thy soul ; I know that thou leadest a holy life, that thou 
wouldest not commit a mortal sin to save thyself from death.” 
At these words Madame de Merret looked at her husband with 
a wild light in her eyes. “ Stop, here is thy crucifix,” added 
the man. “ Swear to me before God that there is no one there. 
I will trust you — I will never open that door.” Madame de 
Merret took the crucifix and said, “ I swear.” “ Louder,” said 
her husband; “and repeat, ‘I swear before God there is no one 
in that wardrobe.’ ” She repeated the phrase unmoved. “It 
is well,” said Monsieur de Merret coldly. 

After a moment’s silence : “ That’s a very fine thing you have, 
I have not noticed it before,” said he, examining the crucifix, 
which was of ebony and silver, and very finely carved. “ I 
picked it up at Duvivier’s ; he bought it of a Spanish religieux 
last summer, when that troop of Spanish prisoners passed 
through Vendôme.” 

“Oh!” said Monsieur de Merret, and hung up the crucifix 
upon the nail again ; then he rang the bell. Rosalie did not 
keep him waiting. Monsieur de Merret went quickly to meet 
her, drew her into the embrasure of the window which looked 
out on the garden, and said, in a low voice : “ I know that 
Gorenflot wants to marry you, that it’s only your poverty which 
prevents your setting up house, and that you have refused to 
marry him if he can’t manage to make himself a master mason 
— very well ! go and fetch him ; tell him to come here with his 
trowel and his other tools. Manage so as to wake no one in 
his house except him, and you’ll make a much finer fortune 
than you ever even coveted. Above all, go out of this house 
without chattering ; if you do not ” and he frowned. Rosalie 


AN ACCURSED HOUSE. 159 

went ; he called her back. u Stop, take my latch-key,” 
said he. 

“Jean !” thundered Monsieur de Merret in the corridor. 

Jean, who served both as coachman and confidential servant, 
left his game of brisque , and came. 

“Go, all of you, to bed,” said his master, making him a sign 
to come up close to him ; then he added, in a low voice, 
“ When they are all asleep — asleep , mind — come down and tell 
me.” 

Monsieur de Merret, who had not lost sight of his wife all the 
time he was giving his orders, came back quietly to her before 
the fire, and proceeded to relate the events of his billiard 
match and their discussions at the club. When Rosalie came 
back, she found Monsieur and Madame de Merret talking 
amicably together. 

The Count had recently had ceilings made to all the rooms 
on the ground floor, which he used for receptions. It was this 
circumstance that had suggested to him the plan he proceeded 
to carry into execution. “ Monsieur, Gorenflot is here,” said 
Rosalie in a low voice. “ Let him come in,” said the Picard 
aloud. 

Madame de Merret grew a little pale when she saw the 
mason. “Gorenflot,” said her husband, “go and get some 
bricks from under the coach-house, and bring enough to wall 
up the door of that closet ; you can use some of the plaster I 
have by me, for plastering the wall.” Then he drew Rosalie 
and the workman aside, and said to them, in a low voice: 
“ Listen, Gorenflot, you will sleep here to-night, but to-morrow 
morning you shall have a passport to go abroad to a town 
which I will name. I shall send you six thousand francs for 
the journey. You will remain for ten years in this town ; if the 
place does not please you, you can settle in another, provided 


i6o 


BALZAC ; 


only that it is in the same country. You will pass through 
Paris, wait for me there ; there I will settle on you, by deed, 
six thousand francs more, which shall be paid you on your 
return, if you have fulfilled the conditions of our bargain. For 
this sum you must keep the most absolute silence about what 
you are going to do to-night. As to you, Rosalie, I will give , 
you ten thousand francs , not to be paid over to you until the 
day of your marriage, and then only on condition that you 
marry Gorenflot ; but to marry, you must be silent ; if not, you 
get no dowry.” 

“ Rosalie,” said Madame de Merret, w come and do my hair.” 

Her husband paced quietly from one end of the room to the 
other, watching the door, the mason, and his wife, but without 
displaying any offensive distrust. Gorenflot could not help 
making some noise. While the workman was unloading his 
bricks, and her husband was at the end of the room, Madame 
de Merret seized the opportunity of saying to Rosalie : 
“A thousand francs a year for thee, my dear child, if thou 
canst tell Gorenflot to leave a chink near the bottom.” Then 
she said aloud, and with perfect composure, “ Go and help 
him!” 

Monsieur and Madame de Merret remained silent during the 
whole time Gorenflot took to wall up the door. With the 
husband, this silence arose from calculation ; he did not wish to 
give hfs wife a chance of saying anything which might have a 
double meaning. With Madame de Merret, it was prudence or 
pride. When the wall had reached half the necessary height, 
the cunning mason seized an opportunity when Monsieur de 
Merret’s back was turned, and gave one of the two panes of 
glass in the door a blow with his pick. This made Madame de 
Merret understand that Rosalie had spoken to Gorenflot. Then 
they all three saw the sad dark face of a man, with black hair 


AN ACCURSED HOUSE. 


161 

and gleaming eyes. Before her husband had turned round, the 
poor woman had time to make a sign with her head to the 
stranger. By this sign she would have said to him “ Hope !” 

At four o’clock, just before daylight, the wall was finished. 
The mason remained in the house, guarded by Jean, and 
Monsieur de Merret went to bed in his wife’s room. The next 
morning, while he was getting up, he said carelessly : “ The 
deuce ! I must go to the mayor and get that passport.” He 
put his hat on his head, took three steps to the door, then 
turned round and took the crucifix. His wife trembled with 
delight. “ He is going to Duvivier’s,” she thought. As soon 
as he had gone out, Madame de Merret rang for Rosalie. 
“The pick, the pick!” she cried in a voice of terror; “to 
work ! I saw how Gorenflot began yesterday ; we shall have 
time to make a hole and stop it up again.” In the twinkling of 
an eye Rosalie had brought her mistress a sort of marline, and 
she began to set to work to pull down the wall with an energy 
of which no words could give the least idea. She had already 
dislodged some of the bricks ; she was gathering up her 
strength for a still more vigorous blow, when she saw Monsieur 
de Merret standing behind her. She fell on the floor in a 
swoon. “ Lay Madame on the bed,” said the Picard coldly. 
Foreseeing what would happen during his absence, he had laid 
a trap for his wife. He had really written to the mayor and 
sent for Duvivier. In fact the jeweller arrived just after the 
disorder in which the room lay had been cleared away. 

“ Duvivier,” he asked, “ did you not buy some crucifixes from 
those Spaniards when they passed through the town ?” 

“No, Monsieur ; thank you, I am much obliged.” He darted 
the look of a tiger at his wife, and she returned it. “Jean,” he 
added, “ have my meals served in Madame de Merret’s room ; 
she is ill. I shall not leave her until she is restored to health.” 

850 


162 


BALZAC. 


The cruel Picard remained for twenty days close to his wife. 
During the first part of the time, if any sound came from the 
walled- up wardrobe, and Josephine began to implore him to 
have mercy on the dying stranger, he prevented her from saying 
a single word by answering, “ You swore upon the crucifix that 
there was no one there? 

After this narrative all the ladies rose from the table, and the 
charm under which Bianchon had held them was dispelled. 
Nevertheless some of them had felt a sort of chill when they 
heard the last sentence. 

w. w. 


' ¥ 

t 

I 

p 



I 


THE ATHEIST’S MASS. 


Doctor Bianchon, a physician to whom science is indebted 
for a grand physiological theory, and who, though still a young 
man, is considered one of the celebrities of the School of Paris 
(itself a centre of light to which all the physicians of Europe 
pay homage), had practised surgery for a long time before he 
devoted himself to medicine. His early studies were directed 
by one of the greatest of French surgeons, a man who passed 
through the scientific world like a meteor — the celebrated 
Despleins. As his enemies themselves acknowledge, an 
intransmittable method was buried in his tomb. Like all men 
of genius he had no heirs; he carried — and he carried away 
everything with him. The fame of a surgeon is like the fame 
of an actor ; it exists only as long as they live, and their talent 
is no longer appreciable after they have disappeared. Actors 
and surgeons, like great singers also, and those masters who 
Increase the power of music ten-fold by their execution, are all 
heroes of the moment. Despleins himself is a proof of this 
similarity between the destinies of these transitory geniuses ; his 
name, yesterday so celebrated, is to-day almost forgotten ; it 
will last only in his special sphere, and will not pass beyond it. 
But are not unheard-of circumstances required for the name of 
a savant to pass beyond the domain of his science into the 
general history of humanity ? Had Despleins that universality 


BALZAC . 


164 

of knowledge which makes a man the Wordy the Expression 
of an age ? Despleins possessed a divine glance ; he penetrated 
into the patient and his disease by a natural or acquired tuition 
which enabled him to seize the diagnostics peculiar to the 
individual, and taking into consideration the atmospheric condi- 
tions and the peculiarities of the temperament, to determine the 
precise time, the hour, the minute for an operation to take 
place. In order thus to proceed in concert with nature, had he 
studied the incessant juncture between beings and elementary 
substances contained in the atmosphere or furnished by the 
earth for their absorption and preparation by man, in order 
that he may draw from them a peculiar expression ? Did he 
proceed by that deductive and analogical power to which the 
genius of Cuvier is due ? — However that may be, he made 
himself the confidant of the flesh, by relying on the present he 
comprehended it in the past and the future. But did he sum up 
all science in his own person as Hippocrates, Galen, and 
Aristotle did ? Has he led a whole school to new worlds ? No. 
If it is impossible to deny that this perpetual observer of human 
chemistry possessed the ancient science of magism — that is to 
say, the knowledge of the elements in fusion, of the causes of 
life, of life before life, of what from its preparations it will be 
before it is, still it is but just to admit that everything in him was 
personal ; he was isolated in his life by egoism, and to-day his 
egoism is the suicide of his fame. Upon his tomb rises no 
sonorous statue proclaiming to the future the mysteries which 
genius seeks at its expense. But perhaps the talent of Des- 
pleins was part and parcel of his belief, and consequently 
mortal. To him the terrestrial atmosphere was a generative 
bag ; he could see the earth like an egg in its shell, and not 
being able to decide whether the egg or the fowl came first, 
he admitted neither the shell nor the egg. He believed neither 


THE ATHEISTS MASS. 165 

in the animal anterior nor in the spirit posterior to man. 
Despleins was not in doubt, he affirmed. In his frank, unmixed 
atheism he was like so many savants, the best men in the 
world, but invincible atheists, such atheists as religious men 
will not acknowledge can exist This opinion could not be 
otherwise in a man accustomed from early youth to dissect the 
being par excellence before, during, and after his life, to search 
him through all his organisation, without finding that single 
soul which is so necessary to religious theories. Recognis- 
ing in man a cerebral centre, a nervous centre, and an 
aërosanguineous centre, the two former supplying each other’s 
places so well that he was convinced during the last two or 
three days of his life that the sense of hearing was not 
absolutely necessary for hearing, nor the sense of sight abso- 
lutely necessary for seeing, and that the solar plexus could 
replace them beyond suspicion of any change ; Despleins, I 
say, finding two souls in man, confirmed his atheism by this 
fact, although it still proves nothing on the subject of God. 
This man, it is said, died in the final impenitence of, unhappily, 
so many fine geniuses ; may God forgive them ! The life of 
this really great man betrayed many pettinesses, to use the 
phrase of enemies anxious to diminish his reputation, but 
which it would be more correct to call apparent contradictions. 
Never having had any cognisance of the motives on which men 
of higher intellect act, the envious or stupid immediately seize 
upon some superficial contradictions in order to draw up an 
indictment on which they obtain a momentary verdict. If, 
later on, success crowns the combinations they have attacked, 
by demonstrating the relation of the preparations to the results, 
still a few of their advance guard of calumnies always survive. 
Thus in our own time, Napoleon was condemned by his 
contemporaries when he stretched out the wings of his eagle 


1 66 


BALZAC 


over England ; 1822 was necessary to explain 1804 and the flat 
bottom boats at Boulogne. 

In the case of Despleins, his reputation and scientific know- 
ledge being unassailable, his enemies found ground for attack 
in his extraordinary temper and his moral character; as a 
matter of fact he certainly did possess that quality which the 
English call “eccentricity.” At times he dressed superbly, like 
Crebillon, the tragic writer, then all at once he would affect a 
strange indifference in the matter of clothes ; sometimes he 
appeared in a carriage, sometimes on foot. He was by turns 
brusque and kind, though apparently hard and stingy ; yet he 
was capable of offering his fortune to his masters when they 
were in exile, and they actually did him the honour of 
accepting it for a few days. No man has been the object 
of more contradictory judgments. Although, for the sake of a 
cordon noir , which physicians have no business to solicit, he 
was capable of dropping a book of Hours out of his pocket at 
Court, it is certain that, inwardly, he laughed at the whole 
thing. He had a profound contempt for mankind, for he had 
studied them from above and below; he had caught them with 
their true expressions in the midst of the most serious and of 
the pettiest actions of life. The qualities of a great man are 
often consolidate. If among these giants one has more talent 
than esprit, still his esprit has a wider range than that of a man 
whom one simply calls “a man of esprit ? All genius pre- 
supposes intuition ; this intuition may be directed to some 
special subject; but a man who can see a flower must be able 
to see the sun. The doctor who is asked by a courtier whose 
life he has saved, “ How is the Emperor?” and answers, “The 
courtier is recovering, the man will follow!” is not only a 
surgeon or a physician, he is also prodigiously spirituel. Thus 
the close and patient observer of humanity will justify the 


THE ATHEISTS MASS. 


167 


exorbitant pretensions of Despleins, and will believe him— as he 
believed himself— to have been as capable of making quite as 
.great a minister as he was a surgeon. 

Among the enigmas which the life of Despleins offers to the 
eyes of his contemporaries, we have chosen one of the most 
interesting, because the point comes at the end of the story, 
and will answer accusations which have been made against 
him. Of all the pupils that Despleins had at his hospital, 
Horace Bianchon was one of those to whom he was most 
warmly attached. Before going into residence at the Hotel 
Dieu, Horace Bianchon was a student of medicine, and lodged 
in le quartier Latin at a wretched petision^ known under the 
name of La Maison Vauquer. At this place the poor youth 
experienced the pangs of that acute poverty which acts as a sort 
of cresset from which young men of great talent should come 
forth refined and incorruptible, like diamonds which can be sub- 
jected to any shock without breaking. In the violent flames 
of passions, just freed from restraint, they acquire habits of the 
most unswerving probity, and accustom themselves by means 
of the constant labour wherewith they have baffled and con- 
fined their appetites to those struggles which await on genius. 
Horace was a straightforward young man, incapable of double- 
dealing in a question of honour, going straight to the point 
without palavering, and as ready to pawn his cloak for 
a friend as to give him his working time or his evenings. 
He was one of those friends who do not trouble themselves 
about what they receive in exchange for what they give, 
being certain of receiving in their turn more than they 
have given. Most of his friends had that inward respect 
for him which unobtrusive goodness inspires, and many 
of them were afraid of his censure. But Horace displayed his 
good qualities without priggishness. He was neither a Puritan 


i68 


BALZAC. 


nor a preacher ; he swore with a will when he gave advice, and 
was quite ready to*take his slice of good cheer if the occasion 
offered. He was good company, not more prudish than a 
trooper, open and straightforward — not like a sailor — a sailor 
nowadays is a wily diplomatist — but like a fine young man who 
has nothing in his life to hide, he held his head high, and 
walked on with a light heart. In fact, to sum up everything in 
a word, Horace was the Pylades of more than one Orestes — 
creditors serving nowadays as the nearest representation of the 
ancient Furies. He wore his poverty with that gaiety which is 
perhaps one of the greatest elements of courage, and, like all 
those who have nothing, he contracted few debts. As sober as 
a camel, and as watchful as a stag, his ideas and his conduct 
were equally unwavering. The happiness of Bianchon’s life 
began on the day on which the famous surgeon received a 
proof of the faults and good qualities which, the one as much as 
the other, made Doctor Horace Bianchon doubly precious to 
his friends. When the chief clinical lecturer takes a young 
man under his wing, that young man has, as they say, his foot 
in the stirrup. Despleins did not fail to take Bianchon with him 
as his assistant to wealthy houses, where some present almost 
always found its way into the pupil’s purse, and where the 
mysteries of Parisian life were insensibly revealed to his provin- 
cial experience. He kept him in his study during consultations, 
and gave him employment there. Sometimes he would send 
him to accompany a rich patient to the baths. In fact, he 
nursed a practice for him. Consequently, at the end of a 
certain time, the despot of surgery had a séid. These two men, 
one at the height of his celebrity and at the head of his own 
science, enjoying an immense fortune and an immense reputa- 
tion ; the other, a humble Omega, without either fortune 
or fame — became intimates. The great Despleins told his 


THE ATHEIST 9 S MASS . 


169 


assistant everything. He knew if such and such a woman 
had sat on a chair by the master, or on the famous 
couch which stood in the study, and on which he slept. 
He knew thoroughly the grta. n an’s temperament — half lion, 
half bull — which at last developed and amplified his bust to 
such a degree as to cause his death by enlargement of the 
heart. He studied the strange corners of that busy life, the 
projects of its sordid avarice, the hopes of the politician hidden 
beneath the savcuitj he could foresee the deceptions which 
awaited the one sentiment buried in a heart not so much 
bronzen as bronzed. 

One day Bianchon told Despleins that a poor water-carrier 
of le quartier Saint Jacques had a terrible illness caused by 
fatigue and poverty ; the poor Auvergnat had ^aten nothing 
but potatoes during the great winter of 1821. Despleins left all 
his patients ; he flew, at the risk of breaking his horse’s wind, 
followed by Bianchon, to the poor man’s, and himself had him 
carried into the private hospital founded by the celebrated 
Dubois, in le faubourg Saint Denis. He went and attended 
the man, and when he had cured him gave him the necessaiy 
sum to buy a horse and a water-cart. This Auvergnat was 
remarkable for an original trait. One of his friends fell ill, so 
he promptly brought him to his benefactor, saying, “ I could 
not bear for him to go to any one else.” 

Despleins, crabbed as he was, grasped the water-carrier’s 
1 and, and said, “ Bring them all to me.” Then he got this son 
o Le Cantal taken in at the Hotel Dieu, and took the greatest 
care of him while he was there. Bianchon had already several 
times noticed in his chief a predilection for Auvergnats, and 
especially for water-carriers ; but as Despleins made his duties 
at the Hotel Dieu a sort of point of honour, he did not see 
anything so very strange in it. One day as Bianchon was 


i7o 


BALZAC. 


crossing la place Saint Sulpice, he caught sight of his master 
going into the church. Despleins, who at that time never went 
a step out of his cabriolet , was on foot, and slipped out of la 
rue du Petit Lion as if he had been into a house of doubtful 
reputation. Naturally seized with curiosity, the assistant, who 
knew his master’s opinions, and was un cabaniste en dyab'e 
(with a y, which seems in Rabelais to imply superiority in 
devylrie\ slipped also into Saint Sulpice. He was not a little 
astonished at seeing the great Despleins— that atheist without 
pity for the angels, because they offer no resistance to the 
bistoury, and cannot have either fistulas or gastritis ; — in fact, 
the dauntless désireur kneeling humbly on his knees, and 
where ? In the chapel of the Virgin, at which he was hearing 
a mass. He gave for the expenses of the ceremony, he gave 
for the poor, as serious all the time as if he had been perform- 
ing an operation. “He can’t be come to throw light on ques- 
tions relative to the parturition of the Virgin,” said Bianchon, 
whose astonishment was boundless. “ If I had seen him 
holding one of the tassels of the canopy of Corpus Christi, it 
would only have been a joke ; but at this hour, alone, without 
any one to see! — it certainly is something to think about.” 
Bianchon did not like to appear to be spying upon the 
first surgeon of the Hotel Dieu, so he went away. It 
chanced that Despleins had invited him to dinner that 
very day, not at his own house, but at a restaurant. 
At dessert Bianchon succeeded by skilful manoeuvring in 
bringing the conversation round to the subject of the mass, 
which he pronounced a mummery and a farce. “ It’s a farce,” 
said Despleins, “which has cost Christianity more blood than 
a 1 the battles of Napoleon, and all the leeches of Broussais ! 
The mass is a Papal invention, based on Hoc est corpus , and 
does not go back further than the sixteenth century. What 


THE ATHEISTS MASS. 


171 

torrents of blood had to be shed in order to establish the 
observance of Corpus Christ ! By the institution of this feast 
the Court of Rome was determined to mark its victory in the 
question of the real Presence — a schism which troubled the 
Church for three centuries. The Waldenses and the Albigenses 
refused to accept the innovation, and the wars of le Comte de 
Toulouse, and the Albigenses are the conclusion of the whole 
affair.” In fact, Despleins revelled in giving vent to all his 
atheistic caprices ; he poured forth a flood of Voltairian 
pleasantry, or — to be more exact — a horrible parody of Le 
Citateur. 

“ Ho ! ho ! ” said Bianchon to himself. “ What has become 
of my morning d'evot ?” He kept silence; he doubted 
whether it was his chief that he had seen at Saint Sulpice. 
Despleins would not have taken the trouble to lie to Bianchon ; 
they knew each other too well ; they had already exchanged 
thoughts on equally serious subjects, and discussed systems 
de natura rerum , probing or dissecting them with the knives 
and scalpel of incredulity. Three months passed ; Bianchon 
did not follow this up, although the fact remained stamped in 
his memory. One day during the year, one of the physicians 
of the Hotel Dieu took Despleins by the arm in Bianchon’s 
presence, as if to ask him a question. 

“What were you going to do at Saint Sulpice, mon cher 
Mâitre ? ” said he. 

“ I went there to see a priest who has cartes of the knee, 
whom Madame la Duchesse d’Angouleme did me the honour 
to recommend to me,” said Despleins. 

The Doctor was satisfied with this excuse — not so Bianchon. 

“ Oh ! he goes to see bad knees in the church, does he ? 
He went to hear his mass,” said he to himself. He determined 
to watch Despleins. He made a note of the day and the hour 


172 


BALZAC. 


when he had caught him going into Saint Sulpice, and 
determined to be there the year following at the same day and 
hour to see if he could catch him again. If he did, the regular 
recurrence of his devotion would justify a scientific investiga- 
tion, for it would not be becoming in so great a man to show 
a direct contradiction between his thought and his action. The 
following year, at the day and hour named, Bianchon, who was 
by this time Despleins’s assistant no longer, saw his friend’s 
cabriolet stopping at the corner of la rue de Tournon and la rue 
du Petit Lion ; from there Despleins crept jesuitically along the 
walls of Saint Sulpice, and again heard his mass at the altar 
of the Virgin. It certainly was Despleins 1 the chief surgeon, 
the atheist in fielto, the chance dévot. The plot was thickening. 
The famous savanfs persistency complicated it all. When 
Despleins had gone out, Bianchon went up to the sacristan who 
had come to unvest the chapel, and asked him whether the 
gentleman was a regular attendant there. 

“ I have been here for twenty years,” said the sacristan, “ and 
all that time Monsieur Despleins has come four times a year to 
hear this mass ; he founded it himself.” 

“ A foundation by him ! ” said Bianchon, as he walked 
away. “ It’s as great a mystery as the Immaculate Conception 
— a thing enough of itself to make a doctor incredulous.” 

Some time passed by before Doctor Bianchon, although he 
was Despleins’s friend, was in a position to talk to him of this 
strange incident in his life. If they met in consultation or in 
society, it was difficult to find that moment of confidence and 
solitude when one sits with one’s feet on the fire-dogs and one’s 
head resting on the back of an arm-chair, when two men tell 
each other their secrets. At last, seven years later, after the 
Revolution of 1830, when the people rushed upon the Arch- 
bishop’s palace, when Republican inspiration drove them to 


THE ATHEISTS MASS. 


173 

destroy the gilded crosses that flashed up like lightning in 
_ this immense ocean of houses, when disbelief side by side 
with sedition stalked the streets, Bianchon caught Despleins 
again going into Saint Sulpice. The doctor followed, and took 
a place near his friend without his making him the least sign 
or showing the least surprise. They heard the votive muss 
together. 

“Tell me, mon cher I said Bianchon to Despleins, when they 
were outside the church, “ what is the reason for this capu - 
cinade of yours? I have now caught you three times going to 
mass —you! You must give me a reason for this mysterious 
proceeding, and explain the flagrant inconsistency between 
your opinions and your practice. You don’t believe in God, 
and yet you go to mass 1 My dear master, you are really 
bound to answer me.” 

“ I am like many dévots , men profoundly religious in appear- 
ance, but quite as much atheists as we are, you and I.” 

Then came a torrent of epigrams on certain political per- 
sonages, the best known of whom represent in this century a 
second edition of Molière’s Tartuffe. 

“ I did not ask for all that,” said Bianchon. “ I want to 
know the reason for what you have just been doing here ; why 
did you found this mass?” 

“Ma fois, mon cher ami? said Despleins. “I am on the 
brink of the grave, so it is as well that I should speak to you of 
the beginning of my life.” 

At this moment Bianchon and the great man happened to be 
in la rue des Quatre- Vents, one of the most horrible streets in 
Paris. Despleins pointed to the sixth storey of one of those 
houses like an obelisk, with a side door opening into an alley, 
at the end of which is a tortuous staircase lit by inside lights, — 
well named, jours de souffrance. It was a greenish-coloured 


m 


BALZAC, 


house ; on the basement lived a furniture dealer, who seemed 
to lodge a different misery on each of his floors. Despleins 
raised his arm with an emphatic gesture and said to Bianchon : 
“ I lived up there for two years ! ” 

“ I know it ; d’Arthez lived there. I used to come here 
almost every day when I was a youth ; we used to call it ‘ Le 
bocal aux grands homines .’ Well ? ” 

“ The mass that I have just heard is connected with events 
which took place at the time when I lived in the garret in 
which you tell me d’Arthez used to live ; the one with the 
window where the line with the clothes on it is floating over the 
pot of flowers. I had such a rough start, my dear Bianchon, 
that I can dispute the palm of the sufferings of Paris with 
any one. I have endured everything : hunger, thirst, want of 
money, of clothes, of boots and shoes, and of linen — all the 
hardest phases of poverty. I have blown on my numbed 
fingers in that ‘ bocal aux grands homines ’ — I should like to 
go with you and see it again. I worked through one winter 
when I could see my head steaming and a cloud of my own 
breath rising like you see the breath of horses on a frosty day. 
I do not know where a man gets his support from to enable 
him to offer any resistance to such a life. I was alone, without 
help, without a sou either to buy books or to pay the expenses 
of my medical education. Not having a friend, my irritable, 
gloomy, restless temperament stood in my way. No one 
was willing to see in my irritability the labours and difficul- 
ties of a man who, from the bottom of the social state where 
he is, is toiling to reach the surface. But— I can say this 
to you; before you I have no need of disguise — I had that 
foundation of noble sentiments and vivid sensibility which will 
always be the appanage of men who are strong enough to climb 
to any summit whatever, after having trudged for a long time 


THE ATHEISTS MASS. 


175 


through the sloughs of poverty. I could get nothing from my 
family, nor my home, beyond the meagre allowance they made 
me. At this time then, all I had to eat in the morning was a 
little loaf which the baker in la rue du Petit Lion sold me 
cheaper, because it had been baked the evening before, or the 
evening before that This I crumbled into some milk ; so my 
morning meal only cost me two sous. I only dined every other 
day, at a pension where the dinner cost sixteen sous. In this 
way I only spent nine sous a day. You know as well as I do 
what care I had to take of my clothes, and my boots and shoes l 
I don’t know whether we feel later as much trouble over the 
treason of a comrade as we feel — you have felt it too — at the 
sight of the mocking grin of a shoe that is coming unsewed, or 
at the sound of a split in the lining of an overcoat. I drank 
nothing but water. I had the greatest respect for the cafés. 
Zoppi seemed to me a sort of Promised Land where the 
Luculli of the pays latin alone had rights of presence. Should 
I ever be able, I said to myself sometimes, to take a cup of 
coffee and cream there, and play a game of dominoes ? Well, 
I carried into my work the fever with which my poveity 
inspired me. I tried to acquire positive details of knowledge, 
that I might possess an immense personal value, and so descne 
the place I was to reach on the day when I passed out of m / 
state of nothingness. I consumed more oil than bread; the 
light that lit me during those stubborn nights cost me more 
than my food. The struggle was long, obstinate, and without 
any consolation. I awoke no sympathy about me. In order to 
make friends, a young man must mix with his fellows, possess a 
few sous to be able to go and drink with them, and go with 
them everywhere where students do go ! I had nothing ! and 
no one in Paris realises what a nothing ‘ nothing ’ is. If ever 
there was an occasion which might betray my poverty, I experi- 


BALZAC. 


176 

enced that nervous contraction of the gullet which makes a 
patient believe that a ball is rising up into the larynx out of the 
oesophagus. Later on I met those people who were born rich, 
who have never wanted for anything, and do not know the 
problem of this rule of three : 1 A young man is to crime as a 
hundred sou piece is to x.’ These gilded idiots say to me : 

‘ Then why did you get into debt ? Why did you contract 
such onerous obligations V They remind me of the princess 
who, knowing that the people were starving for bread, said : 
‘Why don’t they buy brioches V I should very much like to 
see one of these rich people, who complain that I charge them 
too much for operating — yes, I should like to see him alone in 
Paris without a sou or a scrap of baggage, without a friend and 
without credit, forced to work with his five fingers to live. 
What would he do? Where would he go to stay his hunger? 
Bianchon, if you have seen me sometimes hard and bitter, it 
was that I was laying my former troubles upon the callousness 
and egoism of which I have had thousands of proofs in high 
quarters ; or I may have been thinking of the obstacles that 
hate and envy and jealousy and calumny have raised between 
me and success. At Paris, as soon as certain people see you ready 
to put your foot in the stirrup, some of them catch you by your 
coat tail; others loose the buckle of the girth so that you may 
fall and break your head ; another takes the shoes off your 
horse ; another steals your whip ; the least treacherous is the 
one you can see coming up to shoot you, with the muzzle of his 
pistol close to you. You have enough talent, 7iion cher enfant , to 
know very soon the horrible, incessant warfare that mediocrity 
wages against a man of greater power. If you lose twenty-five 
louis one evening, the next morning you will be accused of 
being a gambler, and your best friends will say that the 
night before you lost twenty-five thousand francs. If your 


THE ATHEISTS MASS. 


177 


head is bad, you will pass for a lunatic. If you feel irritable, 
you will be unbearable. If, in order to resist this army of 
pigmies, you collect your superior forces, your best friends will 
cry out that you want to eat up everything, that you think you 
have a right to domineer and play the tyrant. In short, your 
good qualities will become faults, your faults will become vices, 
and your vices will be crimes. If you have saved a man, you 
will have killed him ; if your patient recovers, it will be certain 
that you have assured the present at the expense of the future ; 
if he is not dead, he will die. Stumble, and you will have 
fallen. Invent whatever you will, claim your just rights, you 
will be a sharp man, a man difficult to deal with, a man who 
won’t let young men get on. So you see, mon cher , if I do not 
believe in God, much less do I believe in man. You recognise 
in me, don’t you? an entirely different Despleins from the 
Despleins whom every one abuses. But don’t let us stir up the 
mud ! Well, I lived in that house ; I was hard at work so as 
to be able to pass my first examination ; I hadn’t got a stiver. 
I had come to one of those last extremities when, you know, a 
man says, * 1 must enlist.’ I had one hope. I was expecting 
a trunk full of linen from my home — a present from one of those 
old aunts who, knowing nothing about Paris, think of one’s 
shirts, under the idea that with thirty francs a month their 
nephew lives on ortolans. The trunk arrived while I was at 
the school ,* the carriage cost forty francs. The porter, a 
German shoemaker, who lodged in a loft, had paid the money 
and kept the trunk. I went for a walk in la rue des Fosses 
Saint Germain des Pres, and in la rue de l’Ecole de Medicine, 
but I could not invent a stratagem which would deliver me up 
my trunk, without my being obliged to give the forty francs , 
which I should naturally have paid after having sold the linen. 
My stupidity in this taught me that I had no other vocation 


i 7 8 


BALZAC. 


than surgery. Delicate minds which exercise their power in a 
lofty sphere are wanting in that spirit of intrigue which is so 
fertile in resource and combination ; their talent is chance ; 
they do not seek — they find. Well, at night I returned. My 
neighbour, a water-carrier, named Bourgeat, a man from Saint 
Flour, was going in at the same moment. We knew each 
other in the way that two lodgers get to know each other who 
have rooms on the same landing and hear each other sleeping, 
coughing, and dressing, until at last they get used to one another. 
My neighbour informed me that the landlord, whom I owed for 
three terms, had turned me out ; I had to pack off on the 
following day. He himself had notice to quit on account of his 
trade. The night I spent was the most miserable in my life. 
Where was I to get a messenger to carry my few belongings 
and my books? How was I to pay a messenger and the 
carter? Where was I to go to? I asked myself these un- 
answerable questions again and again, through my tears, like 
madmen repeating their refrains. I fell asleep. Poverty has a 
divine sleep of its own, full of beautiful dreams. The next 
morning, while I was eating my bowl of bread crumbled into 
milk, Bourgeat comes in and says in his bad French — 

“* Monchieur P Etudiant, I’m a poor fellow, a foundling from 
the hospital at Chian Flour ; I’ve no father or mother, and I’ve 
never been rich enough to marry. You’ve not a lot of people 
belonging to you neither ; you’ve not got anything to speak of. 
Look here, I’ve got a hand-cart down below which I’ve hired 
for two chons an hour. It’ll hold all our things ; if you’re 
agreeable, we’ll look out for a place where we can lodge 
together, as we’re driven out of this. After all, it’s not such a 
paradise on earth.’ 

“ ‘ I know that, my good Bourgeat,’ I said ; ‘ but I am in great 
difficulties. Down below I have got a trunk containing linen 


THE ATHEISTS MASS. 


1 l9 

worth a hundred ecus; with that I should be able to pay the 
landlord and also what I owe the porter, but I haven’t got a 
hundred sous.’ 

“ ‘ Hm ! I’ve got some chink] he answered cheerfully, showing 
me a filthy old leather purse. ‘ You’d better keep your linen.’ 

“ Bourgeat paid for my three terms and his own, and settled 
with the porter. Then he put our furniture and my linen on 
to his barrow and pushed it through the streets, stopping before 
every house where there was a placard hung out. /went up to 
see if the place to let would be likely to suit us. At mid-day 
we were still wandering about le quartier Latin without having 
found anything. The price was a great obstacle. Bourgeat 
proposed that we should dine at a wine shop ; we left our 
barrow at the door. 

“ Toward evening I discovered in la cour de Bohan, passage 
du Commerce, two rooms separated by a staircase, at the top of 
a house, under the tiles. We could have lodgings for sixty 
francs a year each. Here then we settled down, I and my 
humble friend. We dined together. Bourgeat, who earned 
about fifty sous a day, possessed about a hundred écus . He 
would soon have been able to realise his ambition and buy a 
horse and water-cart. When he discovered my situation, for 
he could draw out my secrets with a depth of cunning and a 
kindness the memory of which even now touches my heart, he 
gave up for some time the ambition of his whole life. Bourgeat 
had worked in the streets since he was twenty-two ; he sacrificed 
his hundred écus to my future.” 

Here Despleins pressed Bianchon’s arm. 

“ He gave me the necessary money for my examinations. 
He understood, mon ami , that I had a mission — that the needs 
of my intelligence exceeded his own. He took charge of 
me ; he called me his petit j he lent me the money necessary 


BALZAC. 


180 

for my purchases of books ; sometimes he would come in 
very quietly to watch me at work ; in short, he took all the 
care of a mother that I might be able to have plenty of whole- 
some nourishment instead of the bad and insufficient food 
to which I had been condemned. 

“Bourgeat was a man of about forty, with the face of a 
mediaeval burgher, a prominent forehead, and a head that a 
painter might have taken as a model for Lycurgus. The 
poor man felt his heart big with dormant affection ; he had 
never been loved except by a poodle, which had died a short 
time before. He was always talking to me about it, and used 
to ask me if I thought that the Church would consent to say 
masses for the repose of its soul. He said his dog was a 
true Christian ; it had accompanied him to church for twelve 
years without ever having barked. It listened to the organ 
without opening its mouth, sitting quietly by him with an air 
which made him believe that it was praying with him. This 
man centred all his affections on me; he accepted me as a 
being who came in trouble ; he became the most attentive of 
mothers to me, the most delicate of benefactors, in short, the 
ideal of that virtue which delights in its own work. If I met 
him in the streets he cast on me a look of intelligence full of 
inconceivable nobleness. On these occasions he walked as if 
he were carrying nothing ; it seemed to make him happy to 
see me in good health and well clad. In fact, his was the 
devotion of the people, the love of the grisette , carried into 
a higher sphere. He did my commissions, woke me at night 
at certain hours, cleaned my lamp, and polished our landing ; 
he was as good a servant as he was a father, as neat as an 
English girl. He kept house ; like Philopœmen, he sawed 
up our wood ; doing everything in a simple way of his own 
without ever compromising his dignity, for he seemed to feel 


THE ATHEISTS MASS : 


181 

that the end he had in view could ennoble whatever he did. 
When I left this good man to enter at the Hotel Dieu as a 
resident, I cannot describe the sadness and gloom he felt at 
the thought that he could no longer live with me ; but he 
consoled himself with the prospect of saving up the money 
necessary for the expenses of my thesis, and made me 
promise to come on the days when we had leave, to see him. 
He was proud of me ; he loved me for my own sake, and for 
his own too. If you were to look up my thesis, you would 
see that it was dedicated to him. During the last year of my 
term of residence I had earned enough money to repay the 
noble Auvergnat all I owed him, by buying him a horse and 
water-cart. He was furiously angry to think that I was 
depriving myself of the money, and yet enchanted at seeing 
his wishes realised ; he laughed and scolded me toget er, 
looking at the horse and water-cart, and saying, as he wi] e l 
away a tear, ‘ It’s too bad. Oh ! what a splendid cart ! you 
ought not to have done it. . . . The horse is as strong as an 
Auvergnat.’ I never saw anything more touching than this 
scene. Bourgeat absolutely insisted on buying me the case of 
instruments mounted in silver which you have seen in my 
study ; to me it is the most . precious thing I possess. Although 
elated at my first success, he never let the least word escape 
him or the least sign that implied : ■ This man is due to me.’ 
And yet without him poverty would have killed me. The poor 
man was killing himself for me ; he had eaten nothing but 
bread rubbed with garlic, so that I might have enough coffee 
for my vigils. He fell ill. As you may imagine, I spent the 
nights at his bedside ; I pulled him through the first time, but 
he had a relapse two years afterwards, and in spite of the most 
devoted care, in spite of the greatest efforts of science, he had 
to give in. No king was ever nursed as he was. Yes, 


lS2 


BALZAC . 


Bianchon, I tried things unheard of before to snatch that life 
from death. I would have made him live, as much as anything 
that he might witness his own work, that I might realise all his 
prayers for him, that I might satisfy the only feeling of gratitude 
that has ever filled my heart and extinguish a fire which burns 
me even now. 

“ Bourgeat,” continued Despleins, who was visibly moved, 
after a pause, “ my second father, died in my arms. He left 
me everything he possessed by a will he had had made by a 
scrivener, dated the year when we went to lodge in la cour de 
Rohan. He had all the faith of a charcoal burner ; he loved the 
Blessed Virgin as he would have loved his wife. Though he 
was an ardent Catholic, he had never said a word to me about 
my irréligion. He besought me, when he was in danger, to spare 
no pains that he might have the assistance of the Church. I had 
a mass said for him every day. He would often express to me 
during the night fears as to his future ; he was afraid that he had 
not lived a holy enough life. Poor man ! he toiled from morning 
till night. To whom else could Paradise, if there is a Paradise, 
belong? He received the sacraments like the saint he was, 
and his death was worthy of his life. No one followed his 
funeral except me. When I had placed my only benefactor in 
the earth, I pondered how I could perform my obligations to 
him. I remembered that he had no family or friends, or wife, 
or children ; but he believed ; he had a religious conviction. Had 
I any right to dispute it ? He had spoken to me timidly about 
masses said for the repose of the dead. He had not chosen to 
impose that duty upon me, thinking that it would be like asking 
for a return for his devotion. As soon as I could establish a 
foundation, I gave the necessary sum to Saint Sulpice for 
having four masses a year said there. As the only thing I 
could offer Bourgeat in satisfaction of his pious wishes, I go in 


THE ATHEISTS MASS 


183 


his name, on the day on which this mass is said at the 
beginning of every season, and recite for him the necessary 
prayers. I say with the good faith of a doubter : ‘ My God, if 
there is a sphere where Thou puttest after their death those 
who have been perfect, think of good Bourgeat ; and if there is 
anything for him to suffer, give me his sufferings that he may 
enter more quickly into what is called Paradise.’ That, mon 
cher , is all that a man of my opinions can allow himself. God 
must be un bon diable ; he could not be annoyed with me. I 
swear to you I would give my fortune for the belief of Bourgeat 
to enter into my brain.” Bianchon, who attended Despleins in 
his last illness, dares not affirm now that the celebrated surgeon 
died an atheist. Those who believe will like to think that the 
humble Auvergnat will have come to open to him the door of 
Heaven, as he formerly opened to him the door of that earthly 
temple over which is written, Aux grands homme v la patrie 
reconnaissante. 


W. W. 


A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 

( From a Letter written by Louis Lambert .) 

The path leading from Le Croisic to Batz town was not a beaten 
way ; a puff of wind was enough to efface every trace left by the 
cart-wheels or the print of the horses’ hoofs. However, our 
guide’s practised eye was able to discover it by the track of 
cattle and sheep dung. This path in some places went down 
to the sea, and in others rose towards the fields, according to 
the lie of the land, and the position of the rocks which it skirted. 

It was noon, and we had only gone half-way. 

“ We can rest over there,” I said, pointing to a headland 
composed of lofty rocks. It looked as if we might find a nook 
there. 

When the fisherman, whose eyes followed the direction of 
my finger, heard this, he shook his head, and said : “ There 
is some one there. Every one who goes from Batz town to Le 
Croisic, or from Le Croisic to Batz town, always goes round 
another way, so as not to pass him.” 

The man murmured these words in a low tone that suggested 
mystery. 

“ Is it a robber then, or a murderer?” 

Our guide’s only answer was a deep, hollow exclamation, 
which redoubled our curiosity. 

“ But if we do go by, will anything happen to us?” 

“Oh! no” 


A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA. 


185 

“ Will you go by with us ?” 

“ No, Monsieur.” 

“ Well, we will go, if you can assure us that there is no danger.” 

“ I could not say that,” answered the fisherman quickly. “ I 
only know that he who is there will not say anything to you, 
and will do you no harm. Good God ! only he won’t stir an 
inch from where he sits.” 

“What is he then?” 

“ A man 1 ” 

I never heard two syllables uttered in such a tragic tone. At 
that moment we were about twenty paces from a creek in which 
the sea was tossing. Our guide took the road which skirted 
the rocks ; we went on straight in front of us, but Pauline took 
my arm. Our guide hastened his steps, in order to reach the 
place where the two paths met, at the same time that we did. 
He evidently divined that after we had seen the man we should 
walk on quickly. This circumstance inflamed our curiosity, 
which then became so burning that our hearts beat as if we had 
been struck by a feeling of terror. 

In spite of the.heat of the day, and a sort of fatigue caused 
by our walk through the sands, our souls were still filled with 
the indescribable languor of intense delight. They were full of 
pure pleasure that can only be expressed by comparing it to 
the pleasure one feels in listening to exquisite music, such 
music as the “Andiamo mio ben” of Mozart. The melting 
together of two hearts in one pure thought is like the blending 
of two beautiful voices in song. 

To be able to appreciate fully the emotion that seized us 
afterwards, you must have shared the half voluptuous delight 
into which our morning’s ramble had plunged us. Sit for a 
while and watch a wood-dove, with all its beautiful shades of 
colour, perched on a branch that sways above a rivulet, and you 


iSô 


BALZAC. 


will cry aloud with grief when you see it struck to the heart by 
the iron claws of a hawk and borne away with murderous 
speed, swift as powder drives a bullet from a gun. 

We soon reached a small cave, in front of which was a narrow 
ledge, a hundred feet above the sea, protected from the fury of 
the waves by a sheer wall of rock. Before we had gone two 
steps on this platform, we felt an electric shiver run through us, 
not unlike the start one gives at a sudden noise in the middle 
of a still night. 

We saw seated on a piece of rock a man who looked at us. 

His glance darted from his bloodshot eyes like the flash of a 
cannon. The stoic stillness of his limbs I can only liken to the 
unchanging piles of granite amid which he sat. His whole 
body remained rigid, as if he had been turned into stone; only 
his eyes moved slowly. After casting upon us this look which 
had moved us so strongly, he withdrew his eyes and fixed them 
on the ocean stretched out at his feet. In spite of the light 
that streamed upwards from it, he gazed upon it without 
lowering his eyelids, as the eagle is said to gaze upon the sun. 
He did not raise his eyes again. Try and recall, my dear 
uncle, one of those old butts of oak that time has stripped of all 
its branches, whose knotted trunk rears its fantastic form by 
the side of some lonely road ; it will give you a true likeness of 
this man. His was the frame of Hercules in ruins, the face of 
Olympian Zeus wasted by age, and grief, and coarse food, and 
the hard life of them that toil on the sea ; it was as it were 
charred by a thunderbolt. I looked at his hard and hairy 
hands, and I saw the sinews like bands of iron. In his whole 
frame were manifest signs of the same natural power. 

In a corner of the little cave I noticed a great heap of moss, 
and a sort of rough shelf formed by chance m the face of the 
granite. On this shelf stood an earthen pitcher covered with 


A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA. 


187 


the fragment of a round loaf. Never had my imagination — 
when it bore me into the deserts where the first Christian 
hermits dwelt — drawn a picture of grander religion or more 
terrible repentance. Even you, my dear uncle, who have 
experience of the Confessional, have never perhaps seen such 
noble remorse ; here was remorse drowned in the waves of 
supplication, the perpetual supplication of dumb despair. 

This fisherman, this mariner, this rough Breton was sublime ; 
I knew it, but I knew not why. Had those eyes wept ? That 
hand, like the hand of a rough-hewn statue, had it struck? 
That rugged brow, stamped with fierce integrity, whereon 
strength had left the impress of the gentleness that is the 
heritage of all true strength — that brow, scarred deep with 
furrows, was it in harmony with a great heart ? Why did the 
man sit there in granite ? Why had the granite passed into 
the man ? Which was humanity, which was stone ? 

A world of thought took possession of our brains. As our 
guide had anticipated, we passed on quickly in silence. When 
we met he must have seen that we were filled with horror and 
astonishment, but he did not confront us with the truth of his 
predictions; he only said— 

“ You have seen him ? * 

“What is the man?” said I. 

“The people call him ‘ The man under a vow.’” 

You can imagine the movement with which our heads turned 
towards the fisherman at these words ! He was a simple man ; 
he understood our mute interrogation, and this is what he told 
us. I try to preserve his own words and the popular character 
of the story. 

“ Madame, people at Le Croisic, and Batz too, believe that 
this man has been guilty of some crime and is performing the 
penance given him by a well-known rector whom he went to 


i88 


BALZAC ; 


confess to beyond Nantes. Others believe that Carr.bremer — 
that is his name — is under a spell, and that he communicates 
it to any one who passes him to leeward. For this reason 
many people look to see in what quarter the wind is before 
they will pass the rock. If there’s a gale,” and he pointed to 
the north-west, “they would not go on, not if they were going 
to fetch a bit of the true cross ; they are afraid and turn back. 
Others, the rich people at Le Croisic, say that Cambremer has 
made a vow, so he is called ‘The man under a vow.’ There he 
is night and day; he never goes. This talk has a smack of 
truth. Look,” said he, turning round to point us out a thing we 
had not noticed before, “there, on 'the left, he has set up a 
wooden cross, to show that he is under the protection of God 
and the Blessed Virgin and the Saints. He would not be let 
alone as he is, if it were not that the terror he causes every one 
makes him as safe as if he were guarded by a regiment of 
soldiers. He has not spoken a word since he shut himself 
up, as it were, out there in the open. He lives upon bread and 
water which his brother’s child, a little wench of twelve years 
old, takes him every morning. He has made a will and left 
her all his goods — a pretty creature she is too, a little slip of 
a maid, as gentle as a lamb, and as pretty spoken as could be. 
Her eyes are as blue — and as long as that,” said he, holding up 
his thumb, “and her hair is like a cherub’s. If you ask her, 
‘Tell me, Pérotte’ (that’s what we call Pierrette; she is dedi- 
cated to Saint Pierre. Cambremer’s name is Pierre; he is her 
godfather) — ‘Tell me, Pérotte,’ he went on, ‘what does uncle 
say to thee?’ she’ll answer, ‘He says nothing to me, never — 
nothing at all.’ ‘ Well, and what does he do ? ’ ‘ He kisses me 

on the forehead, on Sundays.’ ‘ Thou’rt not afraid, then?* 
‘Why !’ she says, ‘he is my godfather ! He won’t let any one 
else take him his food but me.’ 


A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA. 


189 


“ Pérotte declares that he smiles when she comes, but you 
might as well talk of a sunbeam in a sea-fog, for it’s said he’s 
as gloomy as storm.” 

“ But,” said I, “ you are exciting our curiosity, not satisfying 
it. Do you know what it was that brought him to this? Was 
it grief? or repentance ? or madness ? or crime ? is he ?” 

“Ah, Monsieur, scarcely any one but I and my father know 
the truth about it. My mother, who is now dead, was servant 
to the Justice to whom Cambremer told the whole story. The 
people at the port say that the priest to whom he made his con- 
fession only gave him absolution on that condition. My poor 
mother overheard Cambremer without intending to, because 
the Justice’s parlour was next the kitchen. She heard it, and 
she is dead ; and the judge who heard it, he too is dead. My 
mother made us promise — father and me — never to speak of it 
to the people about here ; but I can tell you this : the evening 
my mother told us the story the hairs of my head stood on end.” 

“ Well, tell us the story, my good fellow; we will not mention 
it to any one.” 

The fisherman looked at us and continued thus : “ Pierre 
Cambremer, whom you saw there, is the eldest of the 
Cambremers. They have all been seafarers, fathers and sons, 
for generations. As their name shows, the sea has always 
given way to them. The one you have seen was a fisherman, 
with craft of his own ; he had boats in which he used to go 
sardine fishing, and he even fished for deep sea fish for the 
dealers. He would have fitted out a ship and fished for cod, 
if he had not loved his wife so much. She was a beautiful 
woman, a Brouin from Guérande — splendid she was — and a 
kind heart too. She was so fond of her husband that she 
could never bear him to leave her longer than was necessary 
i r the sardine fishing. Stop ! They lived down there- -there,” 


BALZAC : 


190 

said the fisherman, going up on to a mound, in order to point 
out an island in a sort of little mediterranean between the 
dunes on which we were walking and the salt marshes of 
Guérande. “Do you see that house? That was his house. 
Jacquette Brouin and Cambremer had only one child, a boy, 
whom they loved — how much shall I say? — Dame! like an 
only child ; they were quite mad about him. If their little 
Jacques had done something into their broth — excuse me, 
Madame — they’d have sworn it only made it all the sweeter. 
How often we used to see them at the fair buying him all the 
finest toys ! It was a folly, every one told them so. Little 
Cambremer soon saw he could do anything he liked, and grew 
up as vicious as a red ass. If any one came to his father and 
said, ‘Your son has almost killed little So-and-so 1’ he’d only 
laugh and say, ‘ Bah, he’ll make a fine sailor ! he’ll command 
the king’s, fleet one day.’ Or another would say, ‘ Pierre 
Cambremer, do you know that your lad has put out Pougaud’s 
little girl’s eye ?’ ‘ There’ll be a lad for the girls ! ’ said Pierre. 
Nothing was wrong with him. Then at ten years old the 
young whelp would fight every one he met ; he’d wring the 
fowls’ necks and gut the pigs for sport. I’ll swear he wallowed 
in blood like a pole-cat ! ‘ He’ll make a splendid soldier,’ said 

Cambremer ; ‘ he has got a taste for blood.’ 

“You see, I remembered all this afterwards,” said the fisher- 
man. “ And so did Cambremer,” he added, after a pause. 

“ By the time Jacques Cambremer was fifteen or sixteen he was 
— well ! a perfect shark. He used to go and play the fool and 
kick up his heels at Guérande and Savenay. Next he wanted 
coin ; so he set to robbing his mother, and she didn’t dare to 
say a word of it to her husband. Cambremer was an honest 
man ; if a man had given him two sous too much on a bill, he 
would go twenty leagues to return them. 


A TR A GED Y BY THE SEA. 


191 

“ At last, one day his mother was plundered of everything 
while his father was away fishing ; their son carried off the 
dresser, the crockery, the sheets, the linen ; he left nothing but 
the four walls. He sold the whole of it to go on the spree with 
to Nantes. The poor woman cried over it for days and nights. 
His father would have to be told when he came back, and she 
was afraid of his father — not for herself— you may be sure 1 
When Pierre Cambremer came back and saw his house 
furnished with things lent to his wife, he said, ‘ What in the 
world is all this?’ His poor wife was more dead than alive. 
At last she said, ‘We have been robbed.’ ‘And where’s 
Jacques?’ ‘Jacques is away on the spree.’ No one knew 
where the good-for-nothing fellow had gone. * He’s too fond 
of his larks,’ said Pierre. 

“ Six months afterwards the poor father heard that his son 
was going to be taken before the Justice at Nantes. He 
journeys there on foot (it’s quicker than by sea), lays hands 
on his son, and brings him back. He doesn’t ask him, ‘ What 
hast been doing ?’ He only says, ‘If thou dost not stay here 
for two years with thy mother and me, and keep thyself 
straight, and go fishing and live like an honest man, thou’lt 
have me to deal with.’ The mad fellow, counting on his parent’s 
folly, goes and makes an ugly face at his father. Thereupon 
Pierre gives him a cuff on the side of his head that lays up 
Master Jacques for six months. Meanwhile the poor mother 
was pining away with grief. 

“ One night she was sleeping peacefully beside her husband 
when she hears a noise ; she raises herself in bed, and gets a 
blow from a knife in her arm. She cries out ; they fetch a 
light, and Pierre Cambremer sees that his wife is wounded. 
He believes it is a robber— as if there were any robbers in our 
parts 1 Why, you might carry ten thousand francs in gold 


192 


BALZAC . 


from Le Croisic to Saint-Nazare under your arm, and no fear of 
any one even asking you what you’d got there. Pierre goes to 
look for Jacques, but he can’t find him anywhere. The next 
morning the villain actually had the face to come back and say 
that he had been at Batz. I ought to tell you that his mother 
did not know where to hide her money ; Cambremer placed 
his with Monsieur Dupolet at Croisic. Their son’s pranks 
had cost them pounds upon pounds ; they were half ruined ; it 
was a hard thing for people who had about twelve thousand 
livres altogether, counting their little island. No one knows 
how much Cambremer had to give at Nantes to get his son 
off. The whole family was in bad luck. Cambremer’s brother 
had met with misfortunes and wanted help. To console him 
Pierre told him that Jacques should marry Pérotte (the younger 
Cambremer’s child). Then, to help him to gain a living he 
employed him at his fishing, for Joseph Cambremer was 
reduced to work for his bread. His wife had died of fever, 
so he had to pay for the months of Pérotte’s weaning. Pierre 
Cambremer’s wife too owed as much as a hundred francs to 
different people, for the little one, for linen and clothes, and 
for two or three months’ wages to big Frelu, who had a child 
by Simon Gaudry, and nursed Pérotte. Well, Cambremer’s 
wife had sewn a Spanish coin into the wool of her mattress, 
with ‘For Pérotte’ written on it. She had had a fine 
education, and could write like a clerk ; she had taught her 
son to read ; it was that was the ruin of him. No one knows 
how it was, but that good-for-nothing Jacques had sniffed 
gold ; he had taken it and gone to run riot at Le Croisic. 
The good man Cambremer— as ill-luck would have it— came 
home with his boat, and as he was landing he sees a bit of 
paper floating on the water; he picks it up and takes it to 
his wife; she recognises the word§ in her own writing, and 


A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA 


193 


falls down on the floor. Cambremer says nothing, goes to 
Le Croisic, and hears there that his son is playing billiards ; 
then he asks to see the woman that keeps the café \ and says 
to her, ‘Jacques will pay you with a certain gold piece which 
I told him not to pay away ; if you will return it to me I will wait 
at the door and give you silver for it instead.’ The good woman 
brought him the coin. Cambremer takes it. * Good,’ says 
he, and returns home. The whole town knew that much. 
But this is what I know, and the rest can only just guess at. 
He tells his wife to set their downstair room in order ; he 
makes a fire in the grate, lights two dips, and sets two chairs 
on one side of the hearth and a stool on the other. Then he 
tells his wife to lay out his wedding clothes, and bids her rig 
herself out in hers. He puts on his clothes, and when he is 
dressed he goes for his brother and tells him to keep watch 
outside the house, and warn him if he hears any sound on 
either of the two beaches — this one and the one by the marsh 
de Guérande. When he thinks his wife has dressed herself, he 
goes in again, loads his gun, and hides it in the chimney-corner. 
Presently Jacques comes home ; he is late ; he had been 
drinking and gambling up till ten o’clock ; he had got brought 
across at Carnouf Point. His uncle hears him shouting 
on the beach by the marshes and goes to fetch him, and 
brings him over without saying anything. When he comes 
in, his father points to the stool and says, ‘Sit thee down 
there. Thou art before thy father and mother whom thou 
hast offended; they must be thy judges.’ Jacques began to 
howl, because Cambremer’s face had a strange set look. His 
mother sat as stiff as an oar. ‘ If thou dost cry or budge an 
inch, if thou dost not sit there as straight as a mast on thy 
stool,’ said Pierre, taking aim at his son with his gun, ‘ I’ll kill 
thee like a dog.’ The son became as dumb as a fish ; the 


194 


BALZAC. 


mother said no word. ‘ Look here,’ said Pierre to his son ; 
‘ here is a piece of paper which has been used to wrap up a 
Spanish gold piece in ; the gold piece was in thy mother’s bed ; 
thy mother was the only person who knew where she had put 
it ; I found the paper floating on the water when I landed ; 
thou hast just given — this very evening — this Spanish gold 
piece to la mère Fleurant, and thy mother cannot find her 
piece in the bed. Explain.’ Jacques said that he had not 
taken his mother’s piece, and that his piece he had by him, left 
over from Nantes. ‘ So much the better,’ said Pierre. 
‘How canst thou prove that to us?’ ‘I had it.’ ‘Thou 
didst not take thy mother’s?’ ‘No.’ ‘Canst thou swear it 
on thy eternal salvation.’ He was. going to swear ; his mother 
raised her eyes and looked at him and said, ‘Jacques, my 
child, take care ; do not swear what is not true ; thou canst 
amend, and repent ; there is still time.’ She wept. ‘You’re 
a nice one,’ said he; ‘you have always tried to get me into 
scrapes.’ Cambremer turned pale. ‘What thou hast just 
said to thy mother will make thy account all the heavier. Let’s 
come to the point! Art going to swear?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Wait a 
minute,’ said he. ‘Had thy coin got this cross on it that the 
sardine merchant put on ours when he gave it us ?’ Jacques 
was getting sober ; he began to cry. — ‘ We’ve talked enough,* 
said Pierre ; ‘lam not going to say anything about what thou 
hast done before, but I don’t choose that a Cambremer should 
die in the Market-place at Le Croisic. Say thy prayers, and 
let’s make haste. There’s a priest coming in a minute to hear 
thy confession.’ His mother had gone out ; she could not stay 
to hear her son condemned. When she was gone, Cambremer, 
the uncle, came with the Rector of Piriac ; but Jacques would 
have nothing to say to him. He was a cunning one ; he 
knew his father well enough to be sure he would not 


A TRAGEDY BY THE SEA. 


195 


kill him without confession. ‘Thank you, Monsieur/ 
•said Cambremer, seeing that Jacques was obstinate, 
‘please to excuse us, but I wanted to give my son a 
lesson ; I beg you not to say anything about it. As to thee/ 
he said to Jacques, ‘if thou dost not mind — the first time it’ll 
be for good and all. I shall put an end to it without confession.’ 
He sent him to bed. The lad believed this, and imagined that 
he would be able to set himself to rights with his father. He 
slept ; the father watched. When he saw that his son was in a 
deep sleep, he covered his mouth with tow, bound it round 
tightly with a piece of a sail, and then tied his hands and feet. 
He raved, ‘he wept blood/ as Cambremer told the Justice. 
You may imagine, his mother threw herself at his father’s feet. 
‘He is judged,’ said he; ‘thou must help me to put him into 
the boat.’ She refused. Cambremer put him in by himself, 
forced him down into the bottom of the boat, and tied a stone 
to his neck. Then he rowed out of the cove — out to the open 
sea till he was as far out as the rock where he now sits. By 
that time the poor mother had got her brother-in-law to take 
her out there. She cried out as loud as she could 4 Mercy/ but 
it was only like throwing a stone at a wolf. It was moonlight; 
she saw the father throw their son, to whom her bowels still 
yearned, into the sea ; and as there was no wind she heard 
Pish 1 then nothing, not a trace, not a bubble. No, the sea 
doesn’t tell secrets. Cambremer landed to quiet his wife’s 
groans, and found her half dead. It was impossible for the two 
brothers to carry her ; they were obliged to put her in the boat 
which had just been used for her son, and rowed her round by 
the Le Croisic channel. Ah, well ! la belle Brouin , as she was 
called, did not last a week ; she died entreating her husband to 
burn the cursed boat. Oh ! he did it too. As for him, it was 
all up with him ; he didn’t know what he wanted. When he 


BALZAC. 


Î96 

walked, he staggered like a man who can’t stand wine. Then 
he took a ten days’ journey, and when he came back, sat down 
where you have seen him, and since he has been there he 
hasn’t spoken a word.” 

The fisherman did not take more than a minute or two to tell 
us this story, and told it even more simply than I have written 
it. The people make few reflections when they tell a tale ; they 
relate the fact that has impressed them, and only translate it 
into words as they feel it. This narrative was as keen and 
incisive as the blow of a hatchet. 

“ I will not go to Batz,” said Pauline, when we reached the 
upper side of the lake. 

We returned to Le Cro’sic by the salt marshes. Our fisherman, 
become as silent as ourselves, led us through the bewildering 
paths. Our souls had undergone a change. We were both 
plunged in gloomy thoughts, saddened by this drama which 
explained the sudden presentiment we had felt at the sight of 
Cambremer. We both knew enough of the world to divine 
that part of those three lives concerning which our guide had 
been silent. The miseries of the three rose up before us as 
plainly as if we had seen them in the scenes of a drama that 
reached its climax in the father’s expiation of his necessary 
crime. We dared not look at the rock where the unhappy man 
sat, a terror to the whole country. Clouds began to darken the 
sky, and a mist rose on the horizon while we walked through 
the most gloomy and melancholy scenery I ever beheld. We 
trod on soil that seemed sick and unwholesome, the salt 
marshes, that may well be called the scrofulous places of the 
earth. The ground is divided into unequal squares, each 
encased in a deep cutting of grey earth, and each full of 
brackish water, on the surface of which the salt collects. These 


A TRAGEDY B Y TH B ÙRA. 


T 97 


artificial pits are divided within by borders, whereon the work- 
men walk armed with long rakes. By the aid of these rakes 
they skim off the brine and carry it to round platforms con- 
trived at certain distances, when it is ready to be formed into 
heaps. For two hours we walked by the side of this gloomy 
chess-board, where the abundance of salt chokes all vegetation, 
and where no one is to be seen, except here and there a few 
paludiers — the name given to the cultivators of the salt. 
These men, or rather this class of Bretons, wear a special dress, 
a white jacket, not unlike a brewer’s. They marry only among 
themselves ; there is no instance of a girl of this tribe having 
married any other man than a paludier. The horrible appear- 
ance of these swamps, with the mud thus raked in regular 
patches, and the grey earth shunned by every Breton flower, 
was in harmony with the pall that had been cast upon our souls. 
When we reached the place where one has to cross the arm of 
the sea formed by the irruption of its waters into this basin and 
no doubt serving to replenish the salt marshes, the sight of even 
such meagre vegetation as adorns the sands on the beach was a 
delight to us. As we were crossing, we could see in the middle 
of the lake the island on which the Cambremers had lived. 
We turned away our heads. 

On arriving at our hotel, we noticed a billiard table in one of 
the ground-floor rooms, and when we learnt that it was the only 
public billiard table in Le Croisic, we made our prepara- 
tions for leaving during the night. The next day we were at 
Guérande. 


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